Call that stormy weather? You ain't seen nothing yet

By Fiona Hill Copyright 1999 The Scotsman January 6, 1999

MUDSLIDES, freak winds and torrential rain wreaked havoc around the Earth last year under the collective name of El Nino. The effects of the freakish weather system were felt on all continents. Hundreds of thousands of people made homeless - whether in the Far East or in England - by strong winds and floods. But any hope that El Nino's effects would be restricted to 1998 appear to be misplaced.

It doesn't take a scientist to point out that our weather is changing, and with winds in Scotland regularly breaking the 70mph barrier and sometimes topping 100mph (Boxing Day saw wind speeds at a high of 102 mph at Prestwick), could Scotland be about to experience on a regular basis weather phenomena only previously experienced in areas with a large land mass or in the tropics?

Environmental scientists have certainly had enough material to examine. Around the world there have been 33 hurricanes and 15 "intensive" hurricanes since 1994: all of which have been mapped and tracked to provide valuable insights into how our weather systems work.

This information has already led meteorologists to predict that 1999 is shaping up to be a bumpy ride: intense and disruptive weather patterns have been forecast, which means weather even more violent than that experienced in Scotland and England in recent weeks.

The storms that have raged their way through Scotland bringing chaos, damage and even, in some cases, death, were caused by areas of vigorous low pressure sweeping in from the Atlantic; but some storms can also be the by-products of an old, decaying hurricane, as they have in the past.

Hurricanes which batter the Caribbean and the United States can cross the Atlantic, whipping Britain with the tail end of their ferocity.

But in an effort to prepare populations and issue appropriate warnings for such severe weather, the experts are turning to making weather predictions not just one week into the future but one year.

Such long-range forecasts have never been possible before, but Professor William Gray, who is based at Colorado State University, and his team (which also includes a senior US government meteorologist) have been studying the action of weather systems so that any so-called "freak" conditions will no longer catch the experts by surprise.

Professor Gray says that the past four years have witnessed the most extreme hurricanes since records began almost 150 years ago, and he expects nine hurricanes - four of which he predicts will be of the intense variety - this year.

If his predictions are accurate, then western Europe, including Scotland, may bear the brunt of the fallout from the hurricanes, so that structural and physical damage may become a common sight in the next 12 months.

And in what sounds like the absolute worst-case scenario, Professor Gray argues that last year's big disaster, Hurricane Mitch, will feel like a pussycat in comparison to what he expects is about to lash countries around the world this year.

But as Geoff Jenkins, the head of the Hadley Centre for Climate Research in Bracknell, explains, these changes are not exactly a new phenomena.

He says: "We have witnessed more hurricanes in recent years because of El Nino. It is a powerful weather system which has been in existence since we had the instruments to measure it."

Jenkins is one of a team of specialists which meets with John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, on a regular basis.

He is there to give advice on the policy-making process surrounding measures that the Government is already attempting to put in place to address the climatic change that both they and the scientists agree has already taken place.

He explains: "El Nino has now finished and La Nina (which occurs when the Pacific cools down) is about to commence. A look at the statistics suggests that La Nina will give rise to a number of hurricanes. If they do cross the Atlantic, they will also give rise to storms here in Britain".

According to findings from the Hadley Centre, the average global temperature in 1998 exceeded that of 1997, which was already the hottest on record. But is nature or man to blame for causing this global warming?

"There is a lot of argument over the issue of global warming; does it affect these weather systems? But the jury is still out on that one," says Jenkins. "The big question is whether it is natural disruption or whether it is caused by human activity. There is no real answer, but we see things pointing towards human activity."

In Paris yesterday, the chic and the beautiful were sunning themselves in unseasonably warm temperatures of 16C. But while some may enjoy the warmer weather, others will suffer. Predictions from the Met Office this week that snow in Scotland will become something only mentioned in history books sent a shiver through the already shaky skiing industry.

"The temperature rise will mean that more of the precipitation in Scotland will be falling as rain rather than snow, so the amount of snowfall will drastically reduce," says Jenkins. But although the drifts will disappear, there will be occasional reoccurrences to remind us of what winters used to be like.

"There will be a huge year-to-year variability, and there will be some winters when the snowfall is still normal. We cannot claim adequate simulation on a year-to-year basis, but we do claim to reflect the underlying trend," says Jenkins.

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