Welcome to shaping the future. In this episode, I’m talking with meteorologist Scott Duncan about how weather data is used to inform both the public and the organizations we rely on to ensure us against the worst of life’s low probability, high impact events.
We also discussed the recent storm alex that struck parts of western and southern europe in the context of frequency and extremity, as well as how the findings of meteorology can be used to alert those people who are in the path of future storms.
It can be easy to exist in a bubble of climate communications and forget that the vast majority of people have no idea of why and what we should be doing to prepare for and prevent the worst of future impacts.
The climate crisis means that many parts of the world will become uninsurable, and this could be more closer to home than we think. Greater literacy in critical weather and climate science will help forge a better dialogue between people who are going to be impacted and the companies that realize future insurance is no longer viable.
It is all food for thought and scott is a prolific social media, communicator using weather and climate graphics to illustrate the very real and present events that are happening in the world. Today i’ll, be adding the links in the notes so that you can follow scott on twitter and instagram.
Thank you for listening. Please do subscribe to shaping the future on any of the major podcast channels, or you can also listen on youtube. The next interview in the series will be with author, professor sarah bridal at the university of manchester, about her recent book food and climate change without the hot air, a really worthwhile source of information for anyone interested in the links between food and climate emissions, [, Music, ] scott, thank you for taking the time to speak to me today.
One of the themes that i return to in the shaping the future series is how tangible extreme weather events have become in the last few years and how this new visibility is moving. The climate issue into a wider public sphere.
If we talk about those extremes now in terms of the wildfires in america, in the arctic, australia, many other places western europe has felt like it’s kind of in a safe zone. It’s on the periphery of these disasters and yet storm alex very recently that impacted southeast france and northwest italy really demonstrated that those impacts can strike hard close to home.
And can you talk a bit about the conditions that create a storm like that and are we likely to see more of this intensity closer to home in and i’m talking about a sort of europe-centric zone yeah? Well, that’s! Sure that’s, a it’s, a very important point about where climate changes are most profound.
So western europe, as you said, it kind of feels like a almost a safe zone or it’s under a blanket and not really seeing you know the wildfires, the western half of the u.s has seen or south america, and even cyber in the Arctic, the changes are so profound and people living there are having to adapt, and we don’t see that living here in the uk or western europe or the rest of europe itself.
So just touching on that it’s. A very important point, but things like storm alex it’s, an interesting one, and there’s, a lot of research in these type of storms. So they’re, not like a hurricane. They’re, not like a tornado.
They’re. What we call a mid latitude, cyclone – and i don’t – want to get too much into the details, but science is showing that there’s, not much sign of these type of storms becoming more frequent, but when they do happen, their Intensity is likely to be increasing as the planet warms through human-induced climate change.
So what we saw with storm alex it was technically a wind event. It was very powerful in the english channel north west, france, brittany was seeing extreme wind gusts, brought down many trees and was pretty disruptive locally, but it wasn’t a huge broad, widespread windstorm.
It didn’t like rattle through europe and cause billions of pounds worth of damage, but when we saw the storm we kind of become stationary and embedded in a very what i would call almost like a washing machine area of low pressure.
Just orbiting around western europe just sat there for days and days and days, and we saw huge amounts of rain which was induced by the moisture coming out of the mediterranean, and then it was hitting southern france and northern italy and it dumped.
I think several hundred millimeters of rain within 24 hours and that’s. You know record-breaking for some weather stations in the area and we saw like damage that was like catastrophic um, some communities that have been around on these river areas for centuries.
I’ve, never seen anything like it. Obviously, those impacts were very, very local but to the catastrophic extent, but when we look at storm alex and its intensity and what made it so extreme, if you had the same storm, for example a few decades ago, would it have been 600 millimeters of rain? Probably not it might have been lower and science is telling us that when we do get these events, they will become more powerful and we are seeing that and when you have a bridge that’s been knocked down.
That’s been standing for centuries. I mean there are different ways of looking at it, but you could kind of attribute that to climate change and it’s, an important factor, but also this part of france.
The southern part of france have had two rainfall events that are said to be once in a century. Rainfall type, flooding events and they had two within the space of a few weeks or in a couple of months, can’t, remember off the top of my head and that sort of thing is showing that to reach these extremes, it’S getting easier, so our baseline for what is normal or what is extreme, is changing and to me that is the definition of a changing climate or changing weather pattern.
This seems to have enormous ramifications for how we plan for future climate impacts. How we understand resilience to what degree is the work that meteorologists and climatologists do being utilized to help create a safer future in this kind of variable extreme climate, it’s, a very interesting part of meteorology and very, very important part of meteorology.
I’ll start with the financial side. Actually because there’s, a huge part of meteorology which a lot of people might not have heard of, but it’s in catastrophe, risk and insurance. So if you were, you know, building a home in this part for france, that’s been affected by storm alex, for example, you’ll, have risk analysis looking at.
How likely is that going to be, and your insurance premium will be affected by that and are they going to say? Well, you know it’s going to be more likely. This is going to flood, so your house is going to be more expensive to build there, for example, so there’s, meteorologists at work.
Looking at what & # 39, s happened, how it’s, changing and what it & #. 39 s gonna be like in the future and obviously finance is a huge part of life in the 21st century and looking forward so that away from the human importance and life itself.
The financial safety side is very, very important and meteorologists, as i said, are working very hard and it’s. A huge part of the industry, but looking more at like perhaps something that’s, more relatable, the human kind of life and warning and prediction, and what’s going to happen next? That’s, probably where it’s, really really exciting or really important for for us as a species, we want to know how likely these are going to be just for our own safety, and i think the best way of looking at It or using an example, storm alex, is a little bit complicated because it’s, perhaps not as relatable as something like a hurricane or these things that really are making headlines across the world.
If you were to build a life in a place that was susceptible to these storms or we could use alex, for example, storm alex – and you were told you know a couple of days in advance that there was a big storm coming and you’Re given enough warning to pick up your belongings and get out – and you come back the next day or a few days – and you see that your entire house was washed away and that information was life-saving.
So meteorologists are developing computer systems, weather models and means of communicating these risks to people that are in these prone areas, and that is so so important and that’s. Relying on technology advances as well, but it’s.
Also down to a huge part of communication. You’ll, hear a weather bulletin come in and some people might not believe it because they say. Oh, the weather person is always wrong, but if you heard that it was going to be like a catastrophic landfall of a hurricane or a storm alex type event, and they told you even 24, even six hours in advance – and you just got out – and you thought You know they might be talking some sense.
It’s priceless that type of information, so the work of meteorologists and climatologists and data scientists all behind the scenes have provided you know, leap times that can help save lives, and that to me is just absolutely astounding.
This kind of feeds into the need for greater literacy from the public in terms of the information that’s coming across as someone who works in meteorology who creates these images and it is engaging with the public and so on.
What are your thoughts on the need for or the level of literacy in this information? At the moment, i think we’re still in a day and age, where understanding the literacy and believing what we’re, seeing in terms of data, is still paramount because asking someone to change the way they behave or the way they Vote when they don’t quite understand exactly what’s going on it’s, almost a waste of time.
Frankly, if somebody doesn’t, believe it or doesn’t know it it’s very hard. I think to ask for anything it’s very, very important, just to get the communication and say well. This is this: is what & # 39? S happened? We’ve actually now got the means of communicating it, not just from data and graphs and maps, but we can actually say well.
Look it’s actually coming into reality. We can see from space that the sea ice is disappearing and we’ve got these new heat records, always getting broken almost on a daily basis, and i think the communication and the data side and getting people on board with that is still.
As i said, paramount yeah and it’s, interesting with the continual breaking of records it’s, almost like a non-story and yet at the same time it is an absolutely insane story. The fact that we’re kind of numb to it if we’ve been following the story, and yet it is a crisis.
Isn’t it yeah. Absolutely a large percentage of the public now acknowledge anxiety from the state of the environment and the risks posed by climate change, but we’re still, some way from a social tipping point needed for the push for the scale of response.
We need to change the course on carbon pollution and we kind of just touched on this public perception thing a moment ago. Can you talk about the necessity for societal change in terms of what you’re seeing and then, when you look to the public and where the public discourse is even at a time like now in britain, for example, yeah, i think from a meteorologist’s, point of view.
I mean it’s, so so easy to get lost in data and what i thought even just a few months ago, actually before lockdown, when everybody started doing quizzes. I realized that i managed to bury myself in science and data and what i thought was obvious.
Wasn’t obvious and then, when i started making very what i thought simple maps just to show what was going on. People reacted in a very, very different way, and i thought that’s, amazing and that’s. That’s.
What we need to do, but as a meteorologist, we really do need to just keep up with the communication of what’s happening, but it’s. It’s, also communicating it in a way that’s. Very digestible at the 21st century, if you’re talking about a kind of 10 minute video on youtube, that’s, explaining what’s going on, i’m afraid.
I think, in my personal opinion, a lot of people don’t have 10 minutes, their tube rides only six or if you’ve got like a long article online. It’ll, be very interested for those that want to read it, but if those that are wanting to read it are wanting to adapt and change, they will.
But the people that, like the majority that probably won’t read. It are the ones that really need to actually read it, so you need something that’s, that’s more and quicker and faster yeah. So i think it’s, combining many different things, because it is complicated there’s, a lot of data and it’s.
It’s, difficult yeah from a meteorologist standpoint. It still is still all about getting what’s happening into a nutshell, without taking away the important bits yeah and we seem to be as a society talking about climate change.
Now it’s, not a taboo subject, but it seems to be this idea of literacy, of understanding what it really means and really understanding the scale of the problem, and all these, these kinds of related issues, haven’t yet been communicated.
I know david attenborough’s just done another documentary which did deal with a lot of the essential issues, but it’s almost like we need one of those every week, for you know for a while just to hammer the point home And keep it in the mind, okay and when you’re producing your work.
Is this something you’re just gonna keep going with it, or are you going to develop it in other ways, because your following online is growing and i imagine it will continue to grow when more and more people start trying to figure out What’s going on? Do you just think that all you need to do is keep producing the current data yeah? I have thought about it, but not too much.
I didn’t really think about it until recently. So i think it is almost you could almost have a full-time job, updating every record that falls and there’s. There’s, good things and bad things about being all over the subject all the time, but the broken record type situation can numb people to the facts and that’s, something i definitely want to be careful of, and also equal reporting, That you know we’re in a day and age, where you should definitely report scientifically and if there’s a hot record, you know you want to report the cold ones as well, but just for example, 2020.
There’s been over 100 heat records, but there’s only been two cold or minimum temperature records so again going off topic, but the what’s going to happen with what i want to do and where i want To go, i & # 39.
Ve, obviously got a full-time job in meteorology, but if i was to then start investigating different ways of engaging people with these graphics, because i’ve, now kind of started to animate them or spin the globe around.
And you know people love that because they can see their place on the map and it’s showing not just the world. As a you know, a 2d flat picture you’re kind of getting something that’s striking and people’s.
Eyes are just drawn to it:’s almost like a it’s almost like a movie’s on in the background in a room and you’ll notice, it a lot easier if it’S moving and i’ve – just found that by by doing that – and i can see the response to that.
So i’m. I’m learning from what people react to and i think i & # 39. Ll start migrating into different types of showing data, um, maybe different forms of communication. I’ve thought about different, maybe bringing in videos and things like that, but you & # 39.
Ve always got to be careful about not to detract from your your main purpose, so i have been thinking about it and i’ll, continue to think but um, i guess, watch the space. Okay, okay! Thank you very much.
It’s. Been very interesting to talk to you and it would be good to talk to you again. It seems that there are events, all the time happening, which are getting more and more extreme or more closer to home.
So yeah it’d, be good to talk to you again at some point: yeah thanks nick.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BVlMJSwizSU
