It was a great pleasure to host the 9th in our series of Water Conservators webinars titled “Climate Change And What It Could Mean For The UK Water Sector”. Sir Brian Hoskins, Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College gave an excellent and engaging presentation about the changes that have occurred in global climate due to human activity and how it may change in decades to come.
He began by showing how measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had risen by 33% since the 1960s and pointed out that for every 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted now, around 15 to 40 tones would remain in the atmosphere for a 1000 years. He then demonstrated how the average temperature rise over the last 100 years varied across the globe with the highest changes occurring over land masses in the northern hemisphere and the lowest occurring over the oceans. These temperature changes had resulted in a number of recent record weather events including temperature, rainfall and storms. Future projections again indicate that the largest temperature rises will occur over land mass with up to an 11 degree rise in places.
Looking at the implications for the UK, Sir Brian showed projections for high and low scenarios with up to 40% more precipitation in winter up to 2080 and up to 46% less rainfall in the summer. In summary he concluded that further climate change is inevitable until net CO2 emissions go to zero, and that the UK is expected to be warmer and wetter in winter and drier (mostly) in summer with heavy rainfall events likely to increase in both summer and winter.
Sir Brian’s presentation was then followed by a fascinating question and answer session where possible mitigation actions for the UK water sector were discussed. 143 participants attended the webinar, a record so far. On behalf of everyone I would again like to thank Sir Brian for a brilliant presentation and also give my thanks to everyone who attended making the webinar a great success.
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