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On Thursday morning, there was a knock on my office door – “The BBC wants to talk to someone about snowmen” – “okay…” I reply, not quite sure where this is going. Five minutes later I am on the phone to a reporter.
It had been in the newspaper that morning about reducing flood risk by building snowmen. The Environment Agency was concerned about a rapid warming in the weather melting the snow and this released water creating a flood risk. The proposed solution from the Environment Agency was based on the fact that snow in large piles, either stacked up or as a snowman, takes longer to melt and hence would slow the delivery of the water to the rivers (see BBC News article). My first thought on this was that we would need to build a huge number of snowmen to capture enough water to have an effect. Having travelled from Durham to London and back this week, it was clear how much of the country was covered in snow. I was about to calculate the number of snowmen required to capture a significant fraction of the water (Prof. Kevin Hiscock at UEA has done this for the River Wensum catchment and estimated 6 million snowmen in that area alone) before I started to think about the problem from another perspective.
Sim Reaney and Brett Cherry look at some of the severe cases of flooding that have taken place this week in North East England.
The heavy rains that hit the North East of England recently caused some major floods in the last few days. Regions of the A1 motorway were shutdown for two days between Disforth (North Yorkshire) and Bradbury (near Durham). People’s homes and businesses were also flooded in Morpeth and other cities, towns and villages in the North East due to heavy rain fall. According to BBC News, among the areas worst hit by flooding were Morpeth, Durham, Rothbury, Chester-le-Street and Stockton-on-Tees.
Some of the water levels (hydrographs) recorded by the Environment Agency show the level above previous records, while in other parts it seems to have returned to previous levels. This morning the River Swale in Yorkshire a major tributary of the River Ure which becomes the River Ouse (which caused major flooding in Yorkshire) was measured at 5.28 metres at Crakehill close to the record of 5.45. Read more
Eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington, USA in 1980.
IHRR was very pleased to welcome Prof Sue Kieffer from the University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign as a COFUND Senior Research Fellow. During her time in the Institute, Sue researched highly energetic geologic events, particularly comparing and contrasting the behaviour of torrential river floods with that of large landslides. Sue is one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid dynamics that addresses dynamic surface processes, such as movement of water and wind and the dynamics of volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts. Her work has made a large impact on the geosciences, especially understanding the geologic processes that lead to different kinds of hazards, such as floods and landslides. Sue’s research spans terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial environments as her geyser theory developed early in her academic career was applied to the study of volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Also, her shock wave theory was used to study the historic eruption of Mt St Helens and the massive flood on the Colorado River in 1983. Read more
The River Wharfe near Oughtershaw (http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo134020.htm)
Dr David Milledge and Prof Stuart Lane present the results of a recent study they authored on flood prevention in the Yorkshire Dales located in Northern England that investigates the role of controlling surface drains (grips) to manage flood risk.
The moorlands of large swathes of Upland Britain are covered by hundreds of kilometres of surface drains or ‘grips’. These grips were originally dug between the 1950s and the 1970s to dry out the peat soil with the expectation that this would improve the vegetation for grazing and game. Grips have dried out the peat, but ‘gripping’ has since been associated with a range of negative impacts both in the moors and in the rivers that flow from them. Drying the peat both changes the ecosystem that it sustains and makes it more susceptible to erosion. This eroded peat is then transported downstream and needs to be removed from the water before we can drink it. Read more
Despite aid efforts in the past, many victims of the 2010 floods are still homeless over a year after the catastrophe occurred. According to a report released by the People’s Accountability Commission on Floods, 1.5 million people are still without shelter in districts of the Sindh province that were extremely damaged by the floods. There are also problems with providing enough resources, such as milk, exposing infants to malnutrition and starvation. The government of Pakistan ended relief activities on 31 December and are no longer providing food, tents or temporary shelter.
Here are two images of southern Pakistan taken by NASA’s MODIS. The first image was taken 24 January 2010 and the second on 23 January of this year.
