In today's round-up we share the MET Office's most detailed long-term projection, bad news for arachnophobes and the passing of a quacking star.
Britain faces four heatwaves and twice as many flash floods a year
In its most detailed long-term projection, the MET Office has predicted Britain will see four heatwaves a year and twice as many flash floods in 50 years.
It took one year for a supercomputer to calculate ‘hyper-local’ predictions (2.2km), which were analysed by top climate scientists.
UKCP Local (2.2km) results show that by 2070 the frequency of hot spells is projected to increase, reinforcing the #UKCP18 findings of a greater chance of hotter, drier summers in the future https://t.co/LekSWWzwGp. @DefraGovUK @beisgovuk @metoffice @EnvAgency @EnvAgency pic.twitter.com/8FhL2EWoos
— Met Office Science (@MetOffice_Sci) September 16, 2019
Data will be used to help government prepare for these weather extremes, such as by building flood defences and helping farmers deal with dryer summers.
‘What we’ve been able to do with the UK’s future climate is to model the impacts of extremely localised events, like the one in Boscastle in August 2004, which saw one month’s rainfall fall in just two hours on the Cornish coastal village: you just can’t capture these in coarser projections,’ said Dr Lizzie Kendon, a climate scientist at the Met Office specialising in extreme rainfall.
Attenborough to front biodiversity initiative
Sir David Attenborough will be the face of a new study exploring biodiversity loss and its impact on the ecomomy.
The project, led by the Cambridge university professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, comes as the government attempts to demonstrate its determination to fight the climate emergency.
Web trawl indicates abundant arachnids
9 spiders you're probably going to see a lot more of in September https://t.co/tCbDx4yoIt pic.twitter.com/it6y5mUWal
— Greenock Telegraph (@greenocktele) September 16, 2019
Spiders are doing particularly well in Britain this year, due to the warm, wet summer, according to entomologists at the University of Gloucestershire.
The conditions have created an ideal environment for the smaller insects that spiders eat, allowing the eight-legged creatures to thrive.
The university team used ‘Twitter mining’ — by logging social media postings about spiders they built an ecological picture of the situation, with early indications suggesting this year’s ‘spider season’ is busier than that of 2018.
On This Day — Lord of the Flies is published
William Golding’s manuscript had been rejected by a raft of publishers before he sent it to Faber & Faber in 1953; they, too, rejected it initially, with the reader assigned to it not being impressed. But a freshly-arrived editor at the company, Charles Monteith, picked it out of the slush pile and, with a few tweaks, published it exactly 65 years ago, as Lord of the Flies.
A career was launched, and Golding would go on to write dozens of books, plays and other works, earning both a knighthood and a Nobel Prize as he did so.
A gorgeous weekend at one of Britain’s favourite events
![A psychedelic Roller? Just one of the thousands of classic car enthusiasts in period dress. Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images](https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/09/GettyImages-1174817622.jpg)
A psychedelic Roller? Just one of the thousands of classic car enthusiasts in period dress. Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
The Goodwood Revival is always a highlight of the calendar — and we’ve picked out some of the best images to give you a flavour of the weekend, whether you made it along or not.
And finally… RIP to the duck who acted as the Queen’s tour guide
Sad news from Edinburgh, where Olive the duck has passed away at Gorgie City Farm.
Olive quacked her way to 15 minutes of fame in July this year when she gave the Queen a guided tour of the farm where she lived.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth met Olive the duck during a visit to the Gorgie City Farm in Edinburgh, Thursday, July 4.
The queen was introduced to a number of animals, including Olive, who she walked with for a short while. pic.twitter.com/rRREL3KTqI— The Voice of America (@VOANews) July 5, 2019
Olive, who often acted as a human and was even known to have hopped on to buses, died last week at the ripe old age of four. ‘Never has a duck been so loved,’ the farm said on social media. ‘Sleep well, little Olive.’
Very sadly on Tuesday evening, our beloved duck Olive passed away. She was being looked after by the vet, but sadly it was her time to go. Olive always preferred people to any other animals and we loved her right back. Never has a duck been so loved. Sleep well, little Olive. pic.twitter.com/kez32F1oO2
— Gorgie City Farm (@GorgieCityFarm) September 12, 2019
![18-month-old Georgia Ricketts sits in a 1934 ERA R3A once driven by the famous racing driver Raymond Mays, which her father maintains and looks after, on day three of the Goodwood Revival Festival. Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images](https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/09/GettyImages-1174817544-920x600.jpg)
1940s glamour, Goodwood’s youngest racer and a psychelic Rolls-Royce: The best pictures from a sun-kissed weekend at the Goodwood Revival