Panorama 2020 E48
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CreativityTranscript
00:00The UK's weather is getting wilder.
00:06This year, we've been soaked with record-breaking rainfall...
00:11..and have sweltered in soaring temperatures.
00:14Well, we're talking about some extreme heat building across parts of the UK.
00:19We've endured the pandemic,
00:21but we've also seen some of our most extraordinary destructive weather yet.
00:26It's an absolute beast.
00:29SCREAMS
00:31Oh, look, it's all the way down there as well.
00:34We'll take you to the eye of the storm...
00:37The water got to this kind of a level.
00:39..and into the heat of this year's exceptional summer.
00:43I'm covered in sweats. I can't sleep.
00:46We'll be asking what today's wild weather tells us about the UK's future climate,
00:52because climate change is going to affect all our lives.
00:56The rate and the nature of the climate change that we're seeing is unprecedented.
01:02With access to the most detailed UK projections yet,
01:06we'll show you how extreme it could get.
01:09It's just a wake-up call, really, as to what we're talking about here.
01:13So is Britain ready for a future of even wilder weather?
01:19Wow!
01:22Wow!
01:41Last November, and large parts of South Yorkshire are underwater.
01:47A month's rain has fallen in 24 hours.
01:57Floodwater started pouring into Kevin and April Wingfield's home
02:01in a suburb of Doncaster just after dawn.
02:06Can we come in and have a look?
02:08You can do by all means. If you don't mind.
02:11I don't give monkeys no mark.
02:13I don't give monkeys no mark. It's gone. So what?
02:16I mean, look at this. There's just water through the whole house.
02:21This isn't the first time the Wingfields' home has been flooded.
02:27They weren't insured when they were flooded in 2007
02:31and are still paying off the debts.
02:34They're not insured now either.
02:39Oh, no, look at this. This is terrible.
02:42Kevin's father, Ken, lives with them on the ground floor.
02:46This is my father-in-law's room downstairs.
02:49This is terrible. Look at the room.
02:52And then there's the bathroom, kitchen.
02:56It's unbelievable.
03:03Ken's got vascular dementia,
03:05so they need to get him to a relative for safety.
03:12It'll keep you.
03:17Are you all right? Yeah, I'm fine.
03:20Just turn him round. That's it.
03:23OK, stay sat on the side. Yeah, stay sat. Don't sit down there.
03:27It's all too much for Kevin and April's daughter, Bethany.
03:31The poor guy. Does he know what's happening?
03:35I don't know.
03:37Granddad. He doesn't really understand.
03:40And I think he's getting a bit scared,
03:42that's why he's decided to go to his mum's.
03:44So... Are you all right? Let's stop it, love.
03:47We've been here before, just not as bad.
03:55The floods followed one of the wettest days
03:58South Yorkshire has ever suffered.
04:01Across the region, 500 homes are flooded and 1,200 evacuated.
04:09Part of this village will remain underwater for three weeks.
04:14Flood water reaching into the village of Fish Lake.
04:17Many of the homes abandoned and many underwater.
04:25Since those floods in South Yorkshire,
04:28Britain has had a year of weather extremes
04:31which have shattered previous records.
04:34This year, we have seen our wettest day on record,
04:37England's driest May, a record-breaking heatwave
04:41and more winter storms.
04:48And across the world, there have been even more destructive weather extremes.
04:54California suffered an unprecedented heatwave and wildfires.
04:58Homes have burned and evacuations continue.
05:02There were wildfires in Siberia too,
05:05where a heatwave hit a record 38 degrees
05:08in a town inside the Arctic Circle.
05:13And the Philippines suffered one of the strongest typhoons ever to hit land.
05:23Linking a single weather event with climate change is difficult,
05:27but trends are becoming apparent
05:30as we emit billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,
05:34the planet is warming up.
05:36And that leads to warmer, wetter, more extreme weather.
05:42I'm on my way to the Met Office,
05:44the UK's authority on weather and climate.
05:52Dr Lizzie Kendon and her team have calculated
05:55how much our planet could warm by the end of the century.
06:00OK, so this is a visualisation...
06:03It's kind of a crystal ball, isn't it?
06:05..a crystal ball of how the climate will evolve.
06:08It depends on whether the whole world reduces emissions.
06:12Lizzie's globe shows us what will happen if we do nothing.
06:16This is for a high-temperature rise scenario,
06:20so it is a credible scenario, I would say,
06:23and it's if we don't curb our emissions,
06:26so if we carry on the course we're doing,
06:28this is what we think will happen.
06:30So if we show you now how the climate's going to change through time,
06:34you can see the time down here.
06:36The redder the map, the bigger the potential change.
06:41But I think what's really striking here
06:43is that the temperature increase accelerates as we go through time.
06:482030, 2040, 2050s.
06:52We're getting big increases in temperature,
06:54especially further north over the Arctic.
06:56And that's essentially due to the fact that the sea ice is melting
07:00and that actually acts as an amplification on the warming.
07:05If emissions accelerate,
07:07the Arctic could get from 8 to 14 degrees hotter
07:10than it was at the end of the 20th century.
07:13Catastrophic for the remaining ice and its ecosystems.
07:18And the UK, which has already warmed by one degree
07:21since the Industrial Revolution,
07:23could see summers from 1 to 6 degrees hotter.
07:27Here's the UK. Big temperature increases.
07:29The UK, about 6 degrees C or so, will hit by the end of the century.
07:34This high-emissions scenario may not be the most likely.
07:38If the world succeeds in curbing emissions,
07:41we can avoid those peaks.
07:43For the Met Office, the high-emissions scenario
07:46is a yardstick against which it measures more optimistic outcomes.
07:50For the world, it is an important warning
07:53of what could happen if we do nothing.
07:58But whatever we do, we're likely to see further changes in our climate.
08:02And this year gives us a taste of what we might have to get used to.
08:11In February, two storms, Kira and Dennis,
08:14slammed into the UK just a week apart.
08:19Just look at that river today.
08:21It's an absolute beast. It's a torrent.
08:28The storms engulfed the entire country.
08:33This lifeboat battled 70mph winds off Hastings to rescue a surfer.
08:41In Wales, wind speeds topped 90mph.
08:46February, climatologically, for the UK,
08:49was an absolutely remarkable month.
08:51It was the wettest February on record for the UK.
08:55It was an exceptional month, very, very extreme.
08:58The Calder Valley in West Yorkshire was particularly badly hit.
09:04In Todmorden, flood sirens sounded an eerie, warlike warning.
09:10Five miles down the road, the storm overwhelmed the town of Hebden Bridge.
09:16As I walked in, the rain was, I would use the word, aggressive.
09:19It was absolutely torrential.
09:23It was powering down, it was pouring off the rooftop.
09:27Matt Bell filmed as he struggled into town
09:30to try and protect the bar he owns.
09:33The river Calder burst its banks.
09:36I'll show you where the water got to, actually.
09:38We've marked it on the wall, so the water got to this kind of a level.
09:43He and a colleague arrived just in time.
09:46In 90 minutes, it went from floor level to chest high.
09:51There was just very little we could do about it, it was so quick.
09:56And the water just kept coming and coming and coming,
09:58so we got ourselves onto barstools.
10:00We were stood on there, the water was pouring down,
10:03and we got ourselves onto barstools.
10:05We were stood on there, the water lapping round our feet,
10:08watching things float by, casks, all sorts of things,
10:12and we were stood there for a matter of hours.
10:20The swollen river gushed right into the village of Mithamroyd,
10:24two miles downstream.
10:27Work was underway to improve the flood defences.
10:30Residents believe that actually made the flooding worse.
10:34It was the third time Mithamroyd had been flooded since 2012.
10:40Phil Chaplin owns a restaurant in the centre of the village.
10:44It came down here, say two-thirds of the way up our window,
10:48which you've probably seen there.
10:51There were so many people coming, helping, grabbing a brush and sweeping out.
10:55Phil has no flood insurance.
10:58His insurance paid out after floods damaged the building in 2015,
11:02but won't cover him for flooding now.
11:06And how many other businesses are affected by that?
11:08Everybody around here. Once they've calmed, that's it.
11:12There is a flood insurance scheme for small businesses,
11:15but they quoted him £27,000 a year.
11:20It's too expensive for him and for most of the other businesses round here.
11:24And what about the future?
11:25How do you feel about running this business into the future?
11:28Well, you can't sell it, because no-one can get a mortgage to buy it,
11:31because you've got no flood insurance.
11:33So you're, like, tied in now to this business.
11:35That's right, and it's all down to the insurance.
11:38Our winters have got 12% wetter on average over the past 60 years.
11:43So what could the future hold?
11:45To find out, the Met Office has used its suite of supercomputers
11:49to create the most detailed, most accurate,
11:52to create the most detailed and localised
11:55UK climate projections ever made.
11:59The overarching picture is warmer, wetter winters,
12:02hotter, drier summers, but within that,
12:04we get this shift towards more extreme events,
12:07so more frequent and intense extremes,
12:09so heavier rainfall when it occurs.
12:12Of course, they can't be certain what will happen.
12:16Some years will always buck the trend
12:18and be cooler or warmer than others.
12:20And there'll be significant regional variations.
12:24Now we can really zoom in and understand
12:27how weather extremes might change in the future,
12:30because we can really now, with confidence,
12:32zoom into city-level detail.
12:36As our climate changes, how much wetter could our winters get?
12:43To show you what the Met Office projections say,
12:46I've been given the run of the BBC weather studios.
12:51Now, I've never done this before,
12:53so this is going to be interesting.
12:56Right, where do I start? Here we go.
12:59Got my little weatherman's clicker, and there we go.
13:04First, let's see what happens
13:06if we significantly reduce global emissions.
13:09And there's a range of possibilities,
13:11because, of course, forecasting the future
13:14is full of uncertainty.
13:16But by around 2070,
13:18winter rainfall could rise on average
13:21by as much as 20%, or fall by 3%.
13:25But the Met Office says that this range means
13:28that it is most likely to rise.
13:30Now, what if we allow emissions to keep increasing?
13:34Here's the projection.
13:36Again, there's the possibility of a small fall,
13:39but an increase is much more likely,
13:41and here, look at that,
13:43it could be, on average,
13:45as much as a third more rain in winter.
13:48And the increase won't be the same across the country.
13:51Let's stick with the more pessimistic high-emissions scenario.
13:55Take a look at this.
13:57The deeper the blue, the greater the increase in rainfall.
14:00So, already, rainy areas here on the West Coast
14:03are, I'm sorry to say, going to get even wetter,
14:06while some places in the far north of Scotland
14:09may even end up getting a little bit drier.
14:12The projections also show you
14:14what could happen in your local area.
14:17We asked Lizzie to look at flood-prone Mythelmroide.
14:21If we follow this high-emissions scenario,
14:24it's not just wintertime,
14:26we also see big changes in summer too.
14:28So, flash flooding is where Mythelmroide is particularly prone to.
14:32The sort of heavy rainfall on an hourly basis,
14:35that's going to see a big increase.
14:3720-30% increase in that type of rainfall as well.
14:40If we cut our emissions,
14:42then these changes won't be as severe as what we're seeing.
14:45So, that is a very important message.
14:49The government says it is investing £40 million
14:52in flood defences for Mythelmroide
14:55to better protect nearly 400 homes and businesses
14:58and infrastructure.
15:02But local people say it's not enough.
15:06But local people want to do something too.
15:09What we could do with a section about six foot, we've got one.
15:14They want to slow the flow of water from these hills
15:17into the Calder Valley
15:19by building so-called leaky dams.
15:23The water used to barrel and cascade
15:25all the way down here at a rate of knots.
15:28Now, because we've put in probably 15, 20, 25 leaky dams,
15:32the water now sits behind the leaky dams,
15:35draining out much slower underneath it,
15:37which means that the water doesn't arrive
15:39in the valley bottom all in one go.
15:42The Environment Agency and the National Trust
15:45are backing natural methods like this
15:47to try to reduce flooding.
15:50This kind of natural flood management scheme
15:53is absolutely critical to somewhere like the Calder Valley.
15:57The scheme gives hope to this flood-hit community.
16:00People like Matt Bell,
16:02whose bar we saw flooded in Hebden Bridge.
16:06Today's been incredibly physical, incredibly rewarding.
16:10Today's turnout that I thought there might be a dozen or so,
16:1440-odd people, it made such a difference.
16:23Across the UK, there are 1.8 million people
16:28whose homes are at risk of sea or river flooding.
16:32Many are in areas of low-lying ground.
16:39Like the village of Hampton Bishop, Herefordshire.
16:4448 homes here have been flooded thanks to February's Storm Dennis.
16:50The main road is impassable.
16:52Oh, reverse up!
16:53Reverse up, good lad.
16:55Cider farmer Keir Rogers has become a taxi driver
16:58for the village with his high-wheeled vehicle.
17:01All right?
17:05Hi, Keir.
17:06How are you?
17:07All right.
17:08Toodle-poo!
17:12In the rural community, it's great to pull together, really.
17:15That's how I see it.
17:16So it's a pleasure to help out.
17:18This has been quite unprecedented,
17:20certainly the biggest flood in my lifetime.
17:24The rain we've had last weekend was, you know, colossal.
17:30But despite the risks, we are still building homes in flood-prone areas.
17:36We've used government figures to calculate how many.
17:41Around 85,000 new homes in England were built on land
17:46with a high probability of flooding in the five years since 2013.
17:50That is almost one in ten of the new homes built in that time.
17:56And that's not all.
17:57More than 1,000 homes have been built
17:59on the most high-risk flood zones in England in the last four years.
18:06I think the development of housing
18:08in our most vulnerable flood-risk areas
18:11is really nothing short of scandalous.
18:14And the big challenge, of course, is climate change
18:16is making these places more risky, so they may be at risk now,
18:19but they're going to be at big risk in the future.
18:21So it illustrates that we've got to fundamentally change
18:24the way that we plan for housing in flood-risk areas.
18:29The government says development in areas of flooding should be avoided
18:33and, when necessary, protections must be put in place.
18:37It's spending £5.2 billion on flood and coastal defences
18:41in England over the next six years,
18:43saying new defences will protect another 330,000 properties.
18:49Baroness Brown is from the agency
18:51that advises and monitors the government on climate change.
18:55Is that enough? Is that adequate?
18:58It's a good start.
19:00Of course, things are going to get worse
19:02because the last few years have been a lot worse.
19:05Things are going to get worse because the likelihood of flooding
19:08is going to continue to get worse,
19:10but I think as we get further out, we know the risk is increasing,
19:13those numbers will need to increase.
19:23Our fragile coastline is at risk from extreme weather too.
19:28EXPLOSION
19:33It's always eroded, but extreme storms and rising sea levels
19:37are speeding that up in some places
19:40along Britain's southern and eastern coasts.
19:47The seaside resort of Hemsby in Norfolk has been especially badly hit.
19:53Seven years ago, a storm surge swept away 10m of sand dunes,
19:59destroying seven homes.
20:05The back of the house has gone.
20:07Don't go too close to that because that will be very unstable.
20:10A BBC camera crew filmed as the community evacuated homeowners.
20:14Come on, come on, that's enough now.
20:16We need to get out now.
20:22No!
20:38It's February this year and former soldier Lance Martin
20:42is in a battle to save his home.
20:45He's been moving huge blocks along Hemsby Beach
20:48to shore up the dunes right beneath his house.
20:51My thoughts on it are that the sea will hit them and break over the top
20:56and it will break the force of the waves,
20:58so hopefully that will cut down on the erosion to the base of the cliff.
21:03If I can slow the force of the waves, then I've achieved my aim.
21:09Lance's house is now right on the edge of the sand dunes.
21:14I know I can't stop it, and you'd be stupid to think that you can,
21:19but I can forestall it, I can stem it.
21:21I'm not trying to stop it completely, I'm just trying to slow the tide down.
21:28Lovely place you've got.
21:31This is amazing.
21:32His is the last remaining house on this side of the coast road.
21:37It cost him £95,000 in 2017.
21:41Oh, this is heavenly.
21:43It's the first house he's ever owned.
21:45No, I mean, this is amazing, and you've got that...
21:48You know, what a skyscape.
21:50He says when he moved in, there was around 30m of land
21:54between his home and the beach.
21:56I had an environmental impact from the estate agents
22:03and part of that was the rate of coastal erosion around here
22:08was about a metre a year, which would have given me 30 to 40 years.
22:13But five months later, the dunes in front of Lance
22:17disappeared in two severe storms.
22:21I was stood in the kitchen making a cup of tea
22:24and I heard this resounding crack from beneath my feet
22:27and looked down and I could actually see the sea.
22:30Hold on, you were standing in the kitchen looking down?
22:32Yeah.
22:35Lance didn't give up.
22:37His house was leaning over the edge,
22:40but he and a farmer managed to winch it 10m inland.
22:45Why is it worth fighting for?
22:46What have you got here that's so special?
22:49It's the first place that I can actually lay my hat down
22:53and say, this is my home, this is me, and it's fantastic.
22:58I just love the place.
23:02The coastline here has always changed.
23:05Tides and waves pull sand from the beach and move it along the coast.
23:10This exposes the dunes,
23:12making them more vulnerable to erosion from storm surges.
23:16The problem is, recently Hemsby's seen some big storms.
23:21Further up the hill, Lance's neighbours are watching and worrying.
23:28Mick, Glenda, am I all right to come in?
23:31Yeah, yeah, hello.
23:33I have to say, you've got an amazing view.
23:36Yeah, I know, can't beat it.
23:38Glenda and Mick Dennington couldn't see the sea
23:41when they moved here from Derby eight years ago.
23:45So what was here in front, Glenda?
23:48It was the houses.
23:50There was one, two, three, four.
23:54When we first came here, the dunes were as high as that telegraph pole.
23:57So there's a big dune right here.
23:59It's going right the way back down there.
24:01So looking out here, you wouldn't have been able to see the sea?
24:04No, no.
24:06From above their neighbours' homes, they've watched as storms wreaked havoc.
24:12And you could see it just churning away.
24:14It was just swirling like a tornado type thing.
24:19And it was just scything, scything the sand.
24:22That must have been quite upsetting.
24:24It was terrible. It was heartbreaking.
24:26You know, just to watch people's homes and belongings,
24:30and really, their lives.
24:34Vulnerable places along the East Anglian coast have seen the same.
24:38Sea level rises and storms eating away at land and homes.
24:44Across England, without support for coastal defences,
24:4728,000 properties could be at risk by 2060.
24:54If current defence plans are fully funded, that could be reduced to 2,000.
25:01It's a much smaller problem than flooding,
25:03but actually people who are experiencing coastal erosion
25:06have much less protection and much less support
25:09than those experiencing flooding.
25:12If the worst happens and their home goes over the edge of the cliff,
25:16they are liable for clearing up,
25:18with, I think, a very small grant allowed towards that.
25:21So I think it is something we need to look much harder at.
25:24The government said it's investing £150 million
25:28in innovation for flood and coastal resilience.
25:35The stress and disruption caused by extreme weather
25:39continues long after floodwaters have passed.
25:44It's early March, before the lockdown,
25:47and back in Doncaster, Kevin and April Wingfield
25:50have spent four months living mostly upstairs
25:53while the ground floor dries out.
25:56How's things?
25:59I bet you are, yes. You've been going on for ages, I can't believe it.
26:02Hello.
26:03Today, work is starting on their kitchen.
26:08Downstairs is more like a building site than a home.
26:13I like this.
26:14Oh, it's his fishing kettle.
26:16Oh, is that your fishing kettle? Yeah.
26:18We used it virtually all the time when we got flooded.
26:21You were relying on this to make tea? Yeah.
26:24And cooking.
26:25You couldn't even fill a pot noodle with that.
26:27I've got pans as well and stuff like that.
26:30Remember, upstairs was full of stuff, wasn't it?
26:32Yeah, it still is.
26:33Yeah, because where else can you put it?
26:35Well, that's it.
26:36Everything's been in the bedrooms for months.
26:39This is Craig's room.
26:41Most of the stuff's out of the kitchen.
26:43Yeah, because you can see there's loads of stuff
26:45from the kitchen piled up here.
26:47How disruptive has it been for your life?
26:50It's been a massive disruption for the past four months.
26:56Living like this, not knowing what's going to happen next.
27:01Are we going to get more rain?
27:03Is it going to happen again?
27:05Are we going to flood again?
27:07There's the mental strain as well of living like this.
27:13It's killing me.
27:14It is really, really killing me.
27:17Yeah.
27:25The storms of winter ended with a dramatic change in the weather.
27:31The clouds disappeared and the sun came out
27:34day after day after day,
27:36making it the sunniest spring the UK has enjoyed
27:40since records began.
27:43It was really quite incredible.
27:45I mean, it smashed the previous record
27:48for the sunniest spring,
27:50a record that has stood since 1948.
27:53But not only that, it was sunnier than most summers
27:57that we experienced.
27:58It brought relief after the isolation
28:01of the coronavirus lockdown,
28:03allowing us to meet outdoors when we could.
28:07But it brought problems too.
28:09Spring saw another record broken.
28:12It was the driest May on record in England.
28:15Long, dry periods can be dangerous
28:18because they create the perfect conditions for wildfires.
28:27During the 12 months to July,
28:29104 wildfires broke out across the UK,
28:33with nine in a two-week period in May alone.
28:39In Lancashire, the local fire service
28:41is tackling two wildfires at once.
28:48The owner of the land, water company United Utilities,
28:52has called in a helicopter.
28:56Two senior firefighters are taking over.
29:00Two senior firefighters are taking us closer to the fire.
29:10What's so dangerous about peat fires
29:12is that they can burn underground
29:14even when the flames are out on the surface.
29:18We're not going to be able to make access over to the fire front.
29:21If you look at that smoke plume,
29:23there's just no way you can have anybody anywhere near that.
29:26Within minutes, smoke engulfs us.
29:32So what's happening is we're getting that changing wind direction.
29:36You can feel the wind gusting now, so that's what's happening.
29:39We've got that gust coming through.
29:42Like a lunar landscape.
29:44We need to start making our way off the island.
29:51The fire started when a barbecue got out of hand.
29:59In three days, more than 1,000 acres were burned.
30:09It's just utter devastation.
30:12It's just utter devastation. The whole place has been burned out.
30:17Since we've been up here,
30:19a fire started on the moor immediately behind us up there.
30:22So you get the sense of tinder-dry moorland
30:25just waiting for a spark to ignite it,
30:28and when it does, just destroying the habitat
30:31for the animals and birds that would live here.
30:33Absolutely devastating.
30:36Lancashire Wildlife Trust estimates
30:38300 pairs of rare birds and their nests have been lost.
30:44It is a massive effort to control the fire.
30:50So I pretty much got on to site about ten minutes after the flame started.
30:53So you were really on this fire quickly,
30:55and yet it still caused this devastation. What does that tell us?
30:59It just shows that no matter what resources you can get
31:01and the speed that you can get there,
31:03the reality is that sometimes you just can't contain a fire
31:05that's spread as fast as this.
31:08In total, it cost close to a million pounds to tackle this single fire.
31:17So we've got ten fire engines worth of people here.
31:19We've got the police on scene with road closures.
31:22We've got the ambulance on standby.
31:24Mountain Rescue working with us.
31:26So overall, it's a big resourcing requirement for a long period of time.
31:31This year, wildfires have burned almost 25,000 acres in the UK.
31:41Anybody who's sceptical about climate change
31:44needs to spend a bit of time working on the front line with emergency services
31:48because we are now dealing with it more frequently
31:51and more severely than ever before.
31:54There's plenty of evidence that the warm weather we've been seeing
31:57is part of an accelerating trend.
32:01And a century's worth of weather records shows us how.
32:06Back in the 1890s, around the time systematic weather records began,
32:10much of the country had average temperatures lower than 12 degrees.
32:15That's these areas in white.
32:17It's only these areas in red that have been affected by wildfires.
32:21In white.
32:22It's only these orange areas that have average temperatures above 12 degrees.
32:27Just look how Britain has warmed since then.
32:30Now those orange colours have spread right up into some parts of Scotland.
32:35But look at this.
32:36Back in the 1890s, just a couple of places, shown in red here,
32:41had temperatures of 14 degrees.
32:43Now look.
32:44The red colours show that by the 2010s, half of England was that warm.
32:50The Met Office has calculated this.
32:52March North has been happening at an average pace of 1.2 miles a year.
32:58And those are average temperatures.
33:02What about the hottest days?
33:04This summer, the southern half of the country
33:07sweltered in one of our most intense heatwaves yet.
33:12It's getting warmer and warmer.
33:14For most of us, it's going to be very warm or indeed hot.
33:17It's hot and it's humid once again.
33:19Temperatures surging well into the mid-30s.
33:25It's early August and the Met Office is on alert for a scorcher in London.
33:32So we're keeping a really close eye on temperatures today
33:35as it's said to be one of the hottest days of the year so far
33:38and also potentially one of the hottest days on record.
33:41The Met Office team monitors temperatures throughout the day.
33:46So we've got the scores on the doors at four o'clock.
33:51We've got 36.4 Celsius both at Heathrow and Kew Gardens.
33:58It's the UK's hottest August day for 17 years.
34:04And it marks the beginning of a truly sizzling week
34:08with temperatures topping 34 degrees in London for six days in a row.
34:16For many people, it makes working from home a nightmare.
34:21It's getting super warm now. I'm starting to sweat.
34:27Audrey Verma is watching the temperature rise
34:30in her flat at Highpoint Village in Hayes, West London.
34:35There are more than 500 flats in this development built around ten years ago.
34:41Right now, even with cloud cover, it's 32 degrees.
34:47And the temperature's not going to drop much below 28, if 30, throughout the night.
34:54She and other residents say their properties overheat in warm weather,
34:58making them unbearable to be in.
35:01I'm Singaporean, so I'm quite used to heat,
35:04but this is really oppressive. It's such a small space.
35:08There's no air flowing through it, and you can feel just how hot it is.
35:16For some people, the heat is most oppressive at night.
35:25OK, it's 10.15pm, just back from work,
35:30and as you can see, the temperature is 30 degrees, 30.4.
35:37Inside, it's actually about 27 outside,
35:40but with the doors wide open, the fan going,
35:45it's not cooling down at all.
35:54Hi, Justin. Yeah, thank you very much for having me over.
35:58Adrian Gill works as a shift worker at Heathrow Airport,
36:01so he often works late.
36:03It feels like you get up, you crawl into work, you come home,
36:07you want to relax, and it's like a sweatbox.
36:10It's like walking into a sauna sometimes.
36:14He says his bedroom gets dangerously hot at night.
36:18It reached 35 Celsius this year.
36:27It's 2.30am.
36:30The temperature in the bedroom is 30.3 degrees,
36:34so I've woken up covered in sweat, can't sleep.
36:39So I've come downstairs, I'm sitting on the balcony here,
36:47just trying to cool down for a little bit,
36:49and then I'll go and try and get a bit more sleep.
36:51But honestly, if you leave a dog in a car in these temperatures,
36:57you'd be prosecuted.
36:59And trying to live like this night after night is just not on.
37:09Allemore Homes, the developer of Highpoint Village,
37:12has installed ventilation in corridors following complaints.
37:17If residents want air conditioning, they have to pay for it themselves.
37:21Those who've had it installed have paid thousands of pounds.
37:26I don't see why we should have to spend money to air condition something
37:30just to make it habitable and stop it affecting our health.
37:34It's just obscene.
37:37Allemore Homes says the lease agreement means any installation and costs
37:42are the legal responsibility of the leaseholder.
37:46They said the apartments met prevailing standards when they were built
37:50and were signed off by building control.
37:56Overheating is becoming a big problem.
37:59It's estimated up to 4.5 million homes could be affected,
38:03and new builds are especially vulnerable.
38:07The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's own research
38:11showed that all new homes are likely to overheat in a fairly normal summer.
38:17So we have a housing stock that is all going to overheat, basically.
38:21There's no agreement about how hot is too hot,
38:24but hot homes can affect our health.
38:28Studies have shown that above 26 degrees, our sleep can be interrupted.
38:33And also we know that above 35 degrees,
38:37there is a high risk that we get heat stress.
38:41There is guidance telling builders how they can make homes less prone to overheating,
38:46but there's no legal basis for it.
38:48So how urgent is it, in your view,
38:51that we recognise the risk of overheating in flats and houses
38:56and begin to impose regulations that do set standards?
38:59Very, very important, because the potential impact
39:02to people's health and wellbeing can be massive.
39:05What happens if we don't bring in regulation?
39:08Well, the problem will continue getting bigger,
39:11because climate change is getting worse.
39:13Increasingly, we're seeing more and more people
39:16and climate change is getting worse.
39:18Increasingly, people will feel uncomfortable in their homes.
39:21Of course, we'll have much more increased illnesses
39:25because of lack of sleep and also deaths as well.
39:28Do you think this could seriously contribute to illness and death?
39:31Yes, yes, absolutely, of course.
39:33Cold can be a killer too,
39:35and a future with warmer winters could mean fewer deaths from cold.
39:41But heatwaves can kill in the summer.
39:44In last year's heatwaves,
39:46900 more people in England died than normally do over the same period,
39:50most of them over 65.
39:53We know that overheating causes deaths.
39:56We know that overheating causes loss of productivity.
39:59And we've seen examples of permitted development in London
40:04where offices have been converted into homes,
40:07where in September 2018 there were rooms
40:10where the temperature reached 47 degrees centigrade.
40:13So that's not a home, that's a death trap.
40:16Is enough being done at the moment
40:18to tackle this problem of overheating in homes?
40:21Absolutely not, no.
40:24The government told us it recognises the importance of tackling overheating
40:29and an upcoming consultation will consider the best ways of doing this.
40:36Not every summer will be a scorcher,
40:39but the Met Office say there could be more hot summers
40:42if global emissions keep accelerating.
40:45So, for example, if we say exceeding 30 degrees C for two or more days,
40:49which would trigger a public health warning,
40:51that is going to be 16 times more frequent by the end of the century.
40:56But that is just one of the scenarios.
41:00How hot our heatwaves will be
41:02depends once again on how much the world reduces emissions.
41:07Let's take the higher emissions scenario first.
41:10Again, there's a range because of the uncertainty
41:13around future climate modelling,
41:15but by 2070 the average summer day
41:19could be between 1.4 and 5.1 degrees warmer
41:24compared to around 20 years ago.
41:27Even if the world makes significant cuts to emissions,
41:30look at this, it'll still get warmer by up to 2.6 degrees.
41:36And once again, how hot it will get depends on where you live.
41:41This is now.
41:43The average summer day across the UK is 19 degrees Celsius,
41:47but look how much it varies.
41:50This is how hot it could be in a higher emissions scenario.
41:54No surprise, the south could see the highest temperatures
41:58with averages in summer of 25 degrees Celsius.
42:02Even those whiter areas have got a bit warmer.
42:05They'll be around 16.5 degrees.
42:08Now, those are average summer temperatures
42:11and, of course, the hottest days are even hotter.
42:14And you can see an extreme example of that
42:17when you zoom in to Hayes in West London
42:20with its overheating flats.
42:22Around 20 years ago, the average hottest day in Hayes
42:26was 32 degrees Celsius.
42:29By around 2070, if emissions continue accelerating,
42:33it could reach, look at that, a sizzling 40 degrees Celsius.
42:42Those are dramatically hotter temperatures, aren't they?
42:45Yes, that's a big change, yeah.
42:47And we're talking about in the course of, you know, our lifetime.
42:51You've been running these computer models
42:53and seeing these results come out.
42:55I mean, how does it feel to see those figures coming out?
42:58I mean, I think it's really frightening
43:00and it's just a wake-up call, really,
43:02as to what we're talking about here.
43:04Remember, if the world cuts emissions,
43:08our summers won't get so hot.
43:11A future of sweltering summers
43:14could have an impact on our farmers too.
43:17Essex farmer Tom Bradshaw
43:19is vice-president of the National Farmers Union.
43:23Normally, this would be sort of up to, yeah, your chest height.
43:26So we'd be kind of fighting our way through it?
43:28Yeah, you can imagine it's all entangled
43:30and it's not easy to walk through.
43:33This year's winter beans, grown for export to Egypt,
43:36are meant to be black.
43:38That just means they're ripe,
43:40but they are not meant to be this small.
43:45When you look at this plant, you can see that you've just got
43:48this little patch here where there's a lot of pods
43:50and then above it you've got nothing.
43:52Yeah.
43:53And so this was in full flower when we had the extreme heat in June
43:56and suddenly it just stopped flowering overnight.
43:58So the weather has really, you know,
44:00it's completely messed this crop up.
44:05The wet winter meant he planted late
44:08and this year's extreme weather
44:10has taken its toll on other crops too.
44:14I mean, it's been the worst year that we've ever known.
44:16Our wheat harvest is about 40% down on where it normally would be
44:19and this is going to be about 50% down
44:21on what we would normally expect it to yield.
44:23So, you know, it's huge, huge falls in production
44:25from what we anticipated.
44:27And say you started to have a second year of bad harvests,
44:29I mean, how would that hit your business?
44:31If you had two bad harvests in a row,
44:33then that is going to really start to make it questionable
44:38as to whether or not you should and could carry on.
44:41Tom thinks there could be benefits from a warmer climate.
44:45He could switch to fruit and veg grown in continental Europe.
44:49But by the middle of the century, droughts could become more common
44:52and crops like these need irrigation.
44:55Some farmers might need to install big water tanks on their farms.
45:01It's going to be expensive, though, isn't it, Tom?
45:03Well, it is going to be expensive,
45:05but we have to try and capture some of the excesses of water
45:07during the peak flow,
45:09so then we can utilise it at times where we don't have the...
45:11you know, where we're short of water,
45:13to try and make sure that we are able to provide that resilient food system.
45:17The Environment Agency says we'll all need to use less water in future,
45:22and water companies are working on plans
45:25to move water from wetter to drier regions.
45:32And there are lots more expensive changes we'll need to make
45:36to deal with the impacts of climate change.
45:39So who's going to pick up the tab?
45:46Seaside resorts like Hemsby in Norfolk
45:49could see more visitors with warmer summers.
45:54I've never, ever had it before.
45:57See what you make, sir.
46:05It's actually not that bad.
46:09But dozens of homes here are at risk from coastal erosion.
46:13Residents have fought for years for a coastal defence.
46:17We're not expecting that coastal erosion will stop.
46:21We're trying to buy some time for Hemsby
46:25to allow it to mitigate the damage that's coming our way.
46:29A coastal defence would be very pricey.
46:33So what is it about Hemsby that's worth protecting?
46:36What is it? It's the community.
46:38It's the beach. It's the holiday industry.
46:4120,000 holiday beds.
46:43Those people are putting money into the economy.
46:45As far as I'm concerned, Hemsby is of value to Norfolk.
46:49This year, there might just be a breakthrough.
46:53The agency that manages the coast is considering proposals
46:57for a line of rocks to break the waves on the beach.
47:01So it's, what, five metres wide? Yeah.
47:03And then it's going to extend 1.4km along this whole frontage.
47:12This won't be a permanent solution.
47:15How much is all of this going to cost?
47:18Even a temporary solution is £4.5 million,
47:21and that might be here for 20 to 30 years.
47:24And protect how many homes?
47:26In this area here, we've got about 50 to 60 homes
47:29that would be at erosion risk over the next sort of...
47:32So we're talking like £100,000 a home to protect them. Yeah.
47:36The government and local council would contribute,
47:39but the city will need to find much of the funding from elsewhere.
47:43So with rising sea levels and intense storms, is it worth it?
47:48Fighting the tide is a losing game, isn't it?
47:51We don't want the coast to just become a ghost town.
47:53We've just seen with all the COVID-19,
47:55people love coming to the beach in various numbers,
47:59and, you know, this is a very important place that in,
48:02I think, in the British psyche, is somewhere that we enjoy rain or shine.
48:10It's not just our homes that need protecting.
48:14Lots of Britain's infrastructure is buckling
48:17under the pressure of our wild weather.
48:20Roads, bridges, energy supplies...
48:25..and reservoirs.
48:29Remember Whaley Bridge?
48:32After intense rain last year, cracks appeared on part of the dam.
48:37Police in Derbyshire have ordered the evacuation of the town of Whaley Bridge,
48:41which after serious damage to the dam.
48:441,500 people had to be evacuated.
48:50Emergency services and military personnel raced against the clock.
48:56It took a week to lower the water levels and plug the cracked dam.
49:02So we're just approaching the Todbrook Dam, where the spillway is,
49:05where we had the failure last summer.
49:08I've come back a year later.
49:11The dam's now been made safe, but three years of further work is needed.
49:17The owners, the Canal and River Trust,
49:20say extreme weather is a problem for the dam,
49:23and that the dam needs to be repaired.
49:26The owners, the Canal and River Trust,
49:29say extreme weather is a problem for the thousands of miles of waterways they manage.
49:36Most of the canal infrastructure was built between 200 and 250 years ago.
49:41It means that the infrastructure doesn't really meet any modern standards.
49:45So the intensity of some of the weather events
49:47is way beyond anything that would have been anticipated.
49:50We've seen increasing numbers of extreme weather events,
49:53and we think it is urgent.
49:55The Trust is now bringing forward plans to upgrade its infrastructure.
49:59That's going to be expensive.
50:01We typically spend somewhere around £25 to £30 million a year
50:05on the major works to repair and maintain large infrastructure like these reservoirs.
50:11We think we're going to need to spend something like another £200 million
50:15over the next five years or so.
50:18Just look at all the work they've done here,
50:20and of course they've still got more to do.
50:23And it isn't just Whaley Bridge, the reservoir here.
50:26Infrastructure across the country is going to need money spent on it
50:30as our weather and climate continues to change.
50:37Wow!
50:40August's unprecedented heatwave broke in spectacular fashion.
50:46Oh!
50:51There were intense downpours across the country.
51:08It's hard to say a single weather event was caused by climate change,
51:12but summer rainfall patterns could be changing.
51:16Often with heatwaves, they'll break down into a more unsettled, thundery regime
51:23where we'll see lots of very intense thunderstorms
51:26because of all of the heat, moisture and energy in the system.
51:31This type of summer downpour,
51:33we could expect to become more intense under a warmer climate.
51:39Heavy rain can cause massive problems for our transport networks.
51:46In parts of eastern Scotland, a month's worth of rain fell in three hours.
51:53The next day...
51:56The thick smoke billowing out of the valley below
51:59where a train derailed near Stonehaven mid-morning.
52:03Three people were killed.
52:05We don't know the cause of the crash,
52:07but initial findings suggest one factor might have been heavy rain
52:11washing material onto the track.
52:14An official investigation is underway.
52:18We had huge rainfall, particularly overnight the night before.
52:23It rained and rained.
52:25I've not really experienced rain like we've had this year.
52:30Graham Whitehead is a chaplain who works with Scottish Railway staff.
52:34He spent a week at the scene.
52:37So I drove in and I could see the train scattered on the embankment
52:44just north of the viaduct.
52:46There were six passengers on the train when it crashed,
52:49but that was because we were in the middle of the Covid pandemic.
52:52Had it been a normal day, that train would probably have had
52:55somewhere around the 90 to 100 passengers mark.
52:57I think it's likely that we would have seen a much higher loss of life.
53:01Graham knew one of the victims, the train conductor Donald Dinnie.
53:07He was a really friendly guy.
53:09He was interested in how your life was going.
53:13So to find out it was somebody that I actually knew...
53:18..it's like having an empty space.
53:21Somebody that you know has just gone,
53:25and somebody like that leaves the gap.
53:29They leave a gap.
53:35Network Rail says hundreds of millions of pounds will need to be spent
53:40to make sure the railways are more resilient to our changing climate.
54:00In Doncaster, it's almost a year since Kevin and April Wingfield's home flooded.
54:09How are you?
54:10Hey, April. You've not been well, have you?
54:12I've shut your handbook.
54:14You've got the stair carpet, you've got the floor down.
54:17This week that's come down.
54:18Is that just this week?
54:19Just this week.
54:20Oh my God, and we're almost at the year anniversary, aren't we?
54:23There's still people not back in their houses yet, and not had work done.
54:28The past year has taken its toll on the whole family.
54:33A lot of tears have been shed.
54:35Yeah? You know what I mean?
54:37You know, being upset and everything like that.
54:40There's not words to describe it.
54:42I mean, you hear people say,
54:44oh, yeah, you've been in floods,
54:47but they don't think what you've gone through.
54:49They don't understand what you've gone through.
54:52For a year, it has not felt like home.
54:59It has been a year of wild weather for Britain.
55:03We've seen how much worse it could get,
55:06but there is hope for the future.
55:10The UK, China, the European Union,
55:12and more than 110 other countries
55:15have now committed to net zero pledges by the middle of the century.
55:20That is a huge step forward.
55:23Of course, they'll have to make good on their commitments
55:26Of course, they'll have to make good on their promises,
55:29but for the first time in ages,
55:31there is real cause for optimism in the battle against climate change.
55:39There is a lot at stake, including our winters.
55:45In my childhood, I played in the snow with my sisters.
55:50But in the future, snowy days like this could become increasingly rare
55:55if emissions continue accelerating.
55:59If we look at something like an ice day,
56:01so that's a day when temperatures never rise above freezing.
56:04As we move to the 2040s,
56:06we'll no longer be seeing those sort of ice days
56:09in the southern part of the country,
56:11and progressively, as we move north,
56:13by the end of 2080,
56:15we'll still see some ice days in parts of Scotland,
56:18but increasingly less so elsewhere.
56:23Snow will be less likely to settle,
56:26so sledging, snowmen and snowball fights
56:29could become a thing of the past for much of Britain.
56:32And so the idea of snow lying on the ground,
56:35the idea of going sledging, as I did when I was a kid,
56:38is going to be much less likely, by the sound of it.
56:40That's right, and we're saying by the end of the century,
56:43much of the lying snow will have disappeared entirely,
56:46except over the highest ground.
56:51So today we've put the Christmas tree up
56:54to make it look pretty.
56:56In Doncaster, the Wingfields are getting ready for Christmas.
57:01Oh, naughty elves.
57:03Santa Claus.
57:05It's been a difficult year,
57:07but now the flood damage has been repaired,
57:09the Wingfields can relax at home again.
57:12Hang on a bit, it's on the Christmas tree.
57:17As we reach the end of 2020,
57:19UN forecasters say it is going to be
57:22one of the three hottest years ever,
57:25yet more evidence of the urgency of tackling climate change.
57:34How high might temperatures climb where you live,
57:36and is it likely to rain even more than it does now?
57:39Visit the home page of the BBC News website,
57:42click the postcode search link, pop in your postcode
57:45and see how the climate could change near you.