Video transcript: fact & opinion – Jill2
A very wet period

Q:  In a wider context, looking at flooding in coastal areas and the unusual weather events that cause flooding in Boscastle and Carlisle, do you think any of this is attributable to climate change, and if so, what do you think we, as individuals, should be doing about it?

Jill:  We are obviously going through a very wet period, but the flooding here isn’t due to climate change – or not appreciably due to climate change.  Nor, you could say, is Boscastle or Carlisle.  There’s plenty of examples of past events like that.  We obviously are going through a wetter period with torrential rain, and I personally (I’m 62) have never seen such rain in my lifetime; the sort of monsoon effect which we are now getting outside actual thunderstorms.  And, I have never before been in a situation where I thought I might actually be drowned driving along a road with the water coming off the fields two foot high either side of me.  So yes, I think we are experiencing climate change, but the flooding in Bewdley isn’t actually due to that.