On Thursday, February 28, 2013 12:55:33 PM UTC, Richard Dixon wrote:
On Thursday, 28 February 2013 12:33:50 UTC, Anne Burgess wrote:



It seems to me that the people who should be paying for the

flood damage are the developers who build on flood plains,

haughs, watermeadows, inches, whatever you like to call them,

and the local authorities who give planning permission for such

developments.



The other issue are the guidelines to which development is restricted. In these shifting times where (through anthropogenic means or otherwise) the climate is changing, if you don't allow construction, say, anywhere near the 50-year flood return period floodplain, then what exactly does this floodplain look like given that extreme rainfall seems to be one of the more likely bi-products of a broadly warming atmosphere.



The sensitivity of extremes (e.g. 50-year rainfall) in a changing climate can be much more volatile than numbers such as the average annual rainfall.. Do we build outside the current floodplain or build outside the floodplain based on a future climate where flooding would be more likely?



I was at a research meeting recently that has been started by the Natural Environment Research Council that is trying to understand the uncertainties around such numbers. Very interesting it was, too!

How far back did the research go, Richard?

From the point of view of my locality here in east London I've often wondered how much consideration local Victorian and Edwardian developers gave to the observations of Luke Howard in The Climate of London. On February 26th 1809, he mentions that the river Lea (which flows into the Thames) was "above a mile in width". If that were to happen today it would inundate a lot of east Bow, west Stratford and the Olympic Park. And this happened after a fairly average year rainfall wise.