<
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/world/europe/uk-steart-marshes-carbon-climate-change-flooding.html>
"The rain has fallen for what feels like two years straight: in drizzles, in
showers and, with troubling regularity, in downpours. The weather has always
been Britain’s favorite topic of conversation. The clouds are familiar.
Increasingly, though, they are also a threat.
In September, a month’s rain fell in a single day in some parts of England. The
18 months to March 2024 were England’s wettest in recorded history. Even on an
island that has built at least part of its identity around tolerating inclement
weather, it has been impossible to ignore the deluge. Flooding has submerged
fields, ruined homes, and at times, cut off whole villages.
As sea levels rise and extreme weather becomes more common, experts say that
Britain’s traditional defenses — sea walls, tidal barriers and sandbanks — will
be insufficient to meet the threat. It is not alone: in September, deadly
floods in Central Europe led to the deaths of at least 23 people.
But on a tendril of land curling out from the coast of Somerset, in
southwestern England, a team of scientists, engineers and conservationists have
embraced a radical solution.
In a project costing 20 million pounds (around $26 million), tidal waters were
allowed to flood the Steart Peninsula in 2014 for the first time in centuries.
Rather than attempting to resist the sea, the land was given back to it. It
was, in the words of Alys Laver, the conservationist who oversees the site, a
“giant science experiment.”
A decade on, its results might offer a blueprint for how some parts of Britain
— and the rest of the world — might adapt to the reality of climate change."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-england-farmland-salt-marsh-floods/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
