The Met Office’s yearly report on the UK’s climate and weather finds that sea levels are increasing significantly quicker than they were a century ago.
According to the State of the Climate report, greater temperatures are becoming the norm in Britain.
Conservationists warn that spring is arriving sooner and that plant and animal life are not adapting rapidly enough to climate change.
The paper highlights the effects of climate change on the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom is warming slightly faster than the average rate of global warming, the report added.
The Met Office evaluated climate and meteorological events for 2021, including catastrophic events such as Storm Arwen, which resulted in devastating flooding.
Since 1900, sea levels have increased approximately 16.5cm (6.5 in), although the Met Office reports that the rate of rising is accelerating. They are increasing at a pace of 3-5,2 mm each year, which is more than double the rate at the turn of the last century.
This exposes more coastal areas to damaging storm surges and winds, causing harm to the environment and property. About 500,000 homes are at risk of floods, according to scientists.
Dr. Svetlana Jevrejeva of the National Oceanographic Centre says that extreme sea levels during November’s Storm Arwen were only avoided due to a lower-than-usual tide.
She told that although the shoreline is always changing, climate change and sea level rise are exacerbating these alterations.
She continues, “The scale, tempo, and impact will alter substantially and quite soon.”
The paper also states that while the climate in the United Kingdom in 2021 was “unremarkable” by modern standards, thirty years ago it would have been spectacular. Because climate change is transforming the earth, hotter temperatures are becoming the norm.
Since the industrial revolution almost two centuries ago, our world has warmed by 1.1C. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, greenhouse gases from human activity are to blame. In the next 20 years, it is anticipated that the global temperature will reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.
It underlines that if the temperatures of last year had occurred in 1992, it would have been one of the warmest years on record for the United Kingdom.
“Although 1 degree Celsius of warming may not seem like much, it has caused maximum temperatures like the 32,2 degrees Celsius recorded in 2021 to become the norm rather than the exception. This is especially striking in light of last week’s record-breaking heat in the United Kingdom “according to Met Office National Climate Information Centre’s Mike Kendon.
The shifting climate is also accelerating the onset of spring, which has consequences for plants, animals, and farmers.
According to the Met Office, early-leafing plants were even earlier last year, but abnormally low temperatures in April led late-blooming species to be delayed.
Professor Tim Sparks of the Woodland Trust noted that September and October were warmer than usual, so delaying autumn and causing trees to lose their leaves later than usual.
