Watersnood Engeland

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Nog meer regen in Engeland verwacht

Honderdduizenden Britten moeten zich opmaken voor nog meer wateroverlast. De Britse meteorologen voorspellen nog meer regen in de zwaarst getroffen gebieden. Vanochtend leken de ergste problemen achter de rug en was op tal van plaatsten de hoogste alarmfase niet meer van kracht.

Vooral in Midden-Engeland, onder meer in Gloucestershire en Oxford, veroorzaken overstromingen door de regenval nog steeds veel problemen.

In de 250 jaar dat er wordt gemeten is het nog nooit zo'n natte zomer geweest. Er is lokaal al 38 cm regen gevallen, twee keer zoveel als normaal.

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Op donderdag 26 juli 2007 16:33 schreef Fredo55 het volgende:

[..]

_{bron nos}

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Op vrijdag 27 juli 2007 11:57 schreef venomsnake het volgende:

[..]

Tis wat..

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Op vrijdag 27 juli 2007 17:04 schreef E.T. het volgende:
Ik zag net op TT een weeralarm staan voor Engeland..
Weer hevige regenval verwacht a.s zaterag in de getroffen gebieden..

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` Het Britse meteorologische instituut
heeft voor komend weekend een weeralarm
afgegeven.Er wordt van zaterdagavond
tot en met zondagochtend zware regenval
verwacht.Het slechte weer kan opnieuw
leiden tot wateroverlast in Engeland en
Wales.

De brandweer roept inwoners die terug
naar huis keren op om voorzichtig te
zijn.Pompinstallaties en elektrische
apparaten kunnen gevaarlijk zijn.Tot nu
toe zijn acht mensen omgekomen.

Het grootste probleem is het gebrek aan
drinkwater.Zeker 130.000 huishoudens
zitten zonder.In totaal zijn er bijna
15.000 huizen onder water gelopen.

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Op vrijdag 27 juli 2007 17:28 schreef venomsnake het volgende:
Wel goed nieuws voor de kano handelaren.

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Friday 27 July WEATHER WATCH A period of rain is expected to move east across England and Wales on Saturday night. Areas at greatest risk of disruption due to heavy rain are, South Wales and Southwest Midlands where there may be 30mm of rain. There may be further flooding Further updates will appear here.

Friday 27 July SEVERE FLOOD WARNING There is 1 severe flood warning currently in force in the United Kingdom: Thames (1). Further updates will appear here.
Friday 27 July FLOOD WARNING There are 12 flood warnings currently in force in the United Kingdom: Midlands (4) Thames (8) Further updates will appear here.

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Engelsen bereiden zich voor op meer wateroverlast
Uitgegeven: 28 juli 2007 16:57
Laatst gewijzigd: 28 juli 2007 17:25

LONDEN - De bewoners in de Engelse overstromingsgebieden hebben zich zaterdag voorbereid op nieuwe zware regenval en overstromingen. Meteorologen voorspellen dat het in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag opnieuw urenlang zal regenen.

De autoriteiten waarschuwden dat het water in de toch al overvolle rivieren snel kan gaan stijgen. De politie in het graafschap Gloucestershire heeft bewoners opgeroepen niet op weg te gaan omdat straten versperd kunnen zijn.


Op zaterdag vond de brandweer in een ondergelopen veld in het historische marktstadje Tewkesbury het lichaam van een 19-jarige man die al een week werd vermist. Daarmee komt het dodental van een maand van overstromingen op negen.

Het zuidwesten en midden van Engeland zijn de afgelopen week getroffen door de ernstigste wateroverlast in zestig jaar. Overstromingen hebben 15.000 huizen beschadigd, aldus de Britse omroep BBC. De totale schade zou kunnen oplopen tot 5 miljard pond (7,5 miljard euro), aldus de Britse omroep BBC.

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Europe in fire and water onslaught
By FT reporters

Published: July 27 2007 19:02 | Last updated: July 27 2007 19:02

Billions of dollars in damage has been wreaked by freak weather across Europe in the past week.

The death toll from the heat, fires, floods and storms has mounted to the high hundreds, with many thousands more made homeless or having their lives disrupted by weather conditions that have smashed records in many countries across the continent.

Agriculture and tourism have been particularly badly hit, with crops scorched in some areas, waterlogged in others, and tourists forced to flee fires in the south and storms and torrential downpours in northern countries. Electricity blackouts and water shortages caused by fire and flood and affecting hundreds of thousands of households and businesses have compounded the chaos.

In Greece, temperatures have reached 43°C, compared with an average for the time of year of about 35°C, and widespread forest fires have brought chaos. Black-outs have exacerbated the problem.

Seven Greek passenger trains were halted on the tracks for several hours during a black-out on Tuesday. On Thursday, the government told civil servants to go home early in a desperate attempt to cut demand for electricity.

Tourists across the south-eastern part of Europe have faced severe disruption to their holiday plans, with hotels evacuated in fire-stricken areas and some roads rendered too dangerous to travel.

Hundreds of deaths in the region have also been attributed to heatstroke. Though Greece has managed largely to avoid such problems by opening air-conditioned clubs where the elderly can rest, in Hungary officials said about 500 people, mostly elderly, were thought to have died. Romania also reported people collapsing in the street, with at least 27 people thought to have died from heatstroke.

The heatwave has also highlighted problems in south-east Europe’s energy sector. The west Balkan grid has been starved of investment for more than a decade, while hydro-power units are running below capacity because of a prolonged drought. Bulgaria, the region’s main back-up supplier, has cut electricity exports this year by more than 70 per cent following the shut-down in January of two units at the Kozloduy nuclear plant on the Danube, as a condition of European Union accession.

Bulgaria has seen previous weather records smashed as temperatures of 44°C sparked dozens of wildfires around the country in the past two weeks. On Thursday, authorities reported 345 wildfires in the country in the previous 24 hours, including 70 that resulted in damage to private property. Two people were reported killed in the fires, while four more were injured.

The Serbian labour ministry imposed a stoppage on outdoor work during the hottest hours of the day as the temperatures reached a record 43°C. Many vendors closed shop, and normally bustling downtown streets in Belgrade appeared nearly deserted.

Temperatures reached 45°C early in the week in neighbouring Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where hospitals – many lacking air conditioning – struggled to cope with heatwave victims.

Firefighters encountered added difficulties in Bosnia and United Nations-administered Kosovo as the heat set off landmines left over from the 1990s wars.

But for northern parts of Europe, flood rather than fire has been the cause of chaos. The UK had its wettest early summer ever recorded as continuing rainfall this week exceeded the previous high set in 1789. More than 20m litres a day of bottled water is being distributed to householders in one of the worst hit areas of the UK in Gloucestershire, where water, sewage and electricity networks have been overwhelmed by the floodwaters.

Referring to the bottled water, Paul Bloodworth in Gloucester, whose house narrowly missed damage, told the FT: “I’m happy to get this. It’s a scarce commodity now.”

Extreme weather also hit Germany, causing flooding in Bavaria and severe storm damage near Hamburg. In Bavaria, an 82-year-old woman drowned in her basement apartment last weekend when flood waters 1.5m high hit the region.

A motorway was closed after cars partially disappeared under a metre of water, bridges were submerged and hundreds of houses severely damaged. At a music festival near Hamburg, 950 young people had to be evacuated by emergency services, and 14 people were injured.

Forecasters say that the bad weather could continue into next week, although some respite is expected in August.

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Op zaterdag 28 juli 2007 17:40 schreef __Saviour__ het volgende:
Lekker zeg, ze blijven maar bezig. Waar blijft het toch vandaan komen.
Zijn er aparte stromingen in luchtlagen ofzo?

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Change in jet stream brings woe
By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent

Published: July 27 2007 19:33 | Last updated: July 27 2007 19:33

It may be difficult for those battling fires in southern Europe and floods in the north to believe, but their woes are both caused by the same weather system.

The downpours that have devastated parts of England and Germany and the fires raging in Mediterranean regions are the result of a weather system known as the northern hemisphere jet stream which, say meteorologists, is occupying an unusual position this summer.

The northern jet stream is a westerly wind, about 11 kilometres above the earth’s surface, steering weather systems across the Atlantic.

It is flowing farther to the south than usual this year, allowing a depression, or low-pressure system, to settle over Britain. Normally, the jet stream blows farther north and acts as a barrier, preventing such bad weather from reaching the UK.

The stream is meandering, and Britain currently finds itself in the down trough, bringing poor weather. The upstream, meanwhile, has brought hot weather to the south of Europe, because the low pressure over northern Europe is pulling warmer air from Africa towards it.

Meteorologists say the jet stream has been known to take such a downward course from time to time, so although its position this year is relatively unusual, it is simply part of the planet’s natural climatic variations.

A spokesman for the UK’s Met Office rejected the idea aired by some observers that a weather phenomenon in the Pacific known as La Niña might have altered the jet stream’s position. He said there was little evidence for a link between Europe’s weather and La Niña, the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific that can be linked to increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

What has also been unusual about the weather pattern of the past few weeks has been its immobility. The low pressure over northern and high pressure over southern Europe have shown little signs of shifting, although forecasters say there may be some change later next week.

The Met Office said the wet weather over northern Europe could have been exacerbated by warmer seas. A mild autumn and winter, and warm spring, have pushed up sea temperatures around the British Isles The consequent evaporation is likely to have put more moisture in the atmosphere, which has then fallen as rain.

This illustrates how global warming could lead to more periods of extreme weather similar to this year’s. Record temperatures in southern Europe could be linked to climate change, as they are just what climate scientists expect to happen as greenhouse gas emissions rise, trapping more of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere. An increase in rainfall is also predicted, because warmer air can hold more moisture.

Tim Osborn, a climate researcher at the University of East Anglia, has calculated that a 1°C change in temperature equates to a 7 per cent change in rainfall, because of this effect. In other words, conditions that would have brought 100mm of rainfall in the past, when it was 1°C cooler, would bring 107mm of rain today.

He said: “If the sequence of weather patterns that caused these [recent British] floods had happened 50 or 100 years ago, it would still have been extremely wet, but perhaps not quite so wet. The slightly cooler atmosphere back then – it has warmed 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius – would have held less water vapour and thus supplied less total rainfall.”

The Met Office described the UK’s floods as a “one-in-200-year event”, with rainfall for the past three months breaking the previous record rain for early summer, which was in 1789.

But Peter Stott, a senior Met Office climate scientist, said such phenomena were now likely to become more common.

“When it rains, it can rain much harder, because the atmosphere can hold more water,” he said.