After the wettest August on record, Linda McKee asks what is happening with our increasingly bizarre climate

Thanks to a reasonably civilised June, it may not yet be the wettest summer ever — but it’s certainly the wettest August on record and that’s with 12 days still to go.

What was unusual about this August? One distinctive feature was the appearance of the jetstream further south than usual and cutting across the British Isles, and there are also theories that rainy summers in Europe could be linked to La Nina, an anomalous cooling of the waters in the central Equatorial Pacific.

As usual, the forecasters are reluctant to lay the blame for the recent succession of soggy summers at the door of global warming, insisting that our deluge is a single small incident in the grand scheme of things.

The question of how far climate change is connected to our present woes has sparked another spat between green campaigners and climate change sceptic Environment Minister Sammy Minister.

The minister in fact agrees that climate change is happening but is dubious about the role of human influence in global warming. But yesterday the Green Party’s climate change spokesperson Dr Peter Doran warned that Mr Wilson’s “ideological refusal to deal with climate change” could cost our community and business sector dearly.

“He is wrong when he claims flash flooding during the summer has not been predicted by climate change modelling,” he said, adding that the latest research forecasts a tendency for precipitation events to clump together into extreme weather events.

“In research commissioned by the Minister's own Department, the Northern Ireland Executive was warned about the increased risk of flash flooding and subsequent impacts on urban infrastructure, including transport,” Dr Doran said.

More to the point, we have the floods — how do we deal with them? As usual, there has been a surge of outrage and calls for the four agencies responsible for various aspects of flood response to pull together, make sure the sand bags are easily accessible and set up a single dedicated response line. But these are all short-term things.

The focus has been shifting to the Planning Service and how it decides on applications to build on flood plains. While Mid Tyrone councillor Seamus Shields praised farmers who used their slurry pumping equipment to divert floodwater from a number of new houses in Beragh, he reserved criticism for the planners who approved some of these developments.

“I warned when these planning applications came before Omagh District Council a few years ago that they were within the flood plain of the Cloughfin River and there was a risk of flooding in the event of exceptional rainfall. Sadly this has now happened,” he said.

Meanwhile, DUP MLA — and former town planner — Jim Wells says there is already a Planning Service statement forbidding development in areas subject to 1 in 100 year events.

The problem is that the floods described by the Rivers Agency as 1 in 100 year events are actually coming along much more frequently, he says.

“Newcastle has had three 1 in 100 year events in the last eight years. A lot of councillors and MLAs have been extremely irresponsible in lobbying to have that 1 in 100 year rule relaxed and what that inevitably leads to is the sort of situation that arose this weekend. With all the building and hardstanding, the inevitable happens, the water runs off very quickly and causes huge damage to property. A lot of housing estates have been built on land where they should never have been started,” he said.

Even if you apply the strict 1 in 100 year rule, the rate of major floods is increasing dramatically, he says. “We are getting more violent peaks and troughs in our weather and this is happening in June, July and August.”

Instead of averaging these flood events back to the 1800s when records began, they should be averaged over a shorter, more recent term to take account of the increasing flood risk, Mr Wells says.

“I think the one in 100 rule will have to be revised. MLAs, councillors and MPs will have to be responsible and when developers come pleading to build on a flood plain the answer must be no.”

Not only is the number of flood events increasing but the landscape’s ability to soak up excess water is also suffering. The more car parks we build — even in our own gardens — and the more we straighten and culvert our rivers, the faster the water races from the mountains to the sea, arriving in cities and towns in one great rush, often with devastating effects.

“Cities are water traps designed to create the maximum amount of flooding as the water has nowhere to go,” Mr Wells says.

“In former times the water would have sat in the wetlands and in the peat on the mountains and been released slowly into watercourses. Now it comes from the mountains to the sea in record time and we need to ensure we don’t build any more property, in areas where they are going to be flooded or make flooding more likely.”