May 13, 2021

Read Nick Allan’s report on the recent online session and view the presentation (click title above).

Many of you will be aware of Connecting the Culm, which is a three year project trying to improve the broad Culm catchment area (including the Ken) in terms of both water quality and reducing the likelihood of flooding.

I attended an online session a couple of weeks back where Dr Freya Garry of the Met Office spelled out the likely effects of global warming for our area. Currently we have around 10 rainy days a month. With a 4°C rise in global warming this would be expected to fall to 7 days, while the number of summer days above 25°C would rise from 2 to 13.

The combination of milder wetter winters and hotter drier summers, each with much more intense bouts of rainfall, increase the risk of flooding, failures of crops and stress to cattle. Record breaking summers like that of 2018 may occur every other year by 2050.

Here is a link to the presentation in case anyone wants to see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wq9VCXhXYY

All this means that managing our local water resources becomes critical and Connecting the Culm wants to engage with local communities. To date Andrew Southall and I have tried to join in as many events as we can, but it would be great to have more people of all ages doing so. The website address is https://connectingtheculm.com/ and it is easy to see upcoming events or sign up to their mailing list so you get sent news of them in advance.

Nick Allan