Great Britain. England is threatened by severe flooding

The UK government is launching a campaign to raise public awareness of the real threat of large-scale flooding. On Monday, it was reported that two-thirds of those living in the area threatened by flooding were unaware of the risk, the Guardian writes. Government agencies ensured that the military was ready to help in the event of a flood of a large scale, difficult to contain.

The British Met Office meteorological services forecast that England could experience severe flooding from La Nina and drought in February. Dried soil has difficulty absorbing large amounts of water that can remain above the surface and flood farms, buildings and farmland.

The Environment Agency said there are approximately five million residential and business buildings in the flood hazard zone in England.

La Nina is the anomaly that occurs when the surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean near the equator, especially off the coast of South America, is below average. This phenomenon has a significant impact on the weather in various parts of the world. Researchers report that climate change favors La Niña, as well as its opposite, El Niño. The World Meteorological Organization said the former will affect the winter weather for the third time in a row.

Will Lang of the Met Office reported that the closer to 2023, the risk of unstable weather conditions increases. He noted that this is another winter that will likely be influenced by the La Nina phenomenon, as was the case with last winter, so “it would not be unusual for the wettest part of the season with the highest flood risk to happen again in February.”

This year, in February, the people of England struggled with flooding rivers and floods. Lang added that the two months leading up to this year’s February – January and December – were relatively dry.

Since 1998, England has had the 10 wettest years in history, the Guardian noted. This does not mean, however, that summers with heavy rain or snowfall exclude the problem of drought, as this year has shown. July 2022 turned out to be the driest July in England since 1935. This is the month in which the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was broken, 40.3 degrees Celsius in Lincolnshire.

Caroline Douglas from the Environment Agency emphasized that as a result of the negative climate changes, different weather records are broken each year. She added that there was a situation where, for seven days in February, 180 percent of the rain fell, which usually falls throughout the month. “We can see that there are more extreme things happening because of climate change,” she said.