What can households and local communities do to adapt and to mitigate the climate impacts already ‘baked in’ from past and present carbon emissions? How can we build resilience to these impacts? Resilience in this context is the ability to recover from adverse events quickly and resume normal life.
To download a pdf of this article: Building local resilience
The essential services that are key to protect are:
The Met Office have identified the main climate impacts for the Teignbridge area as:
1. There will be more rainfall on average, but especially in the winter months with less rain in the summer. Rain will be heavier with an increased risk of flash flooding from moorland run off and rapid increase in river flows causing flooding and bank erosion.
2. Rising sea levels (from ice melt) will increase risks of coastal flooding and erosion of cliffs and estuaries. The combination of these two, with high tides and wind in an adverse direction known as a storm surge, will cause rivers to back up and flood more severely creating a sewage risk as well.
3. The intensity and frequency of storms will increase causing wind damage to buildings and power lines.
4. The warming climate will result in warmer summers and an increased risk of droughts and heatwaves and is causing the Gulf Stream to become more convoluted which can trap weather systems in one position for longer, with either a constant stream of low pressure systems or a high pressure system stuck over the UK.
The impact of these on nature and agriculture is more difficult to predict but there will be changes in what is able to be grown locally.
There is some good news. Compared to most areas even in the UK we live in a very benign area for climate. We are unlikely to run short of water as long as there is some investment in reservoir storage. Warmer weather will reduce winter heating bills and result in fewer climate related deaths overall as increased heatwave deaths are likely to be less than lives lost through severe cold. In agriculture there will be new opportunities e.g. wine, sub-tropical fruits and even tea, but this will require adaptation by farmers.
The following are the key issues we need to mitigate against:
Resilience for households and communities will require an understanding and assessment of the climate risks that are most likely to affect them and to plan ahead to mitigate. This may involve:
The Bovey Tracey Town Council does have an emergency plan last reviewed in November 2021, but which will now be updated annually in future for wider impact events.
If you want to understand more about local climate forecasts:
Go onto https://climatedataportal.metoffice.gov.uk
Select Local Authority followed by Climate Explorer from the menu
Then select Teignbridge from the local authority menu
Then select General Report for Teignbridge to generate a detailed report
Within the report you will find the following table which summarises the possible changes in temperature and precipitation for Teignbridge. The projections of local changes are for three future Global Warming Levels (GWL). Changes are relative to a 1981-2000 baseline when global warming was 0.6°C above the pre-industrial period.
