At the recent Global Boards Conference & Exhibition in London, UK, the conference social evening was held in a function room above a local pub. As delegates left the conference venue for the three minute walk it was raining. At this point, one delegate from Germany made a classic British weather joke. "So... you haven't managed to sort out that problem with the rain yet?" he asked. "No." I replied, quite seriously. "We haven't." He probably wasn't expecting a serious answer.
The UK hadn't solved any problems with its recent 'Winter Storms' at that point. The weather had been causing havoc all over the UK since late December 2013, when the first low pressure systems started to pass across the country. The River Thames flooded to record levels (one of many rivers to burst its banks), the Somerset Levels have been 'lakes' for almost two months now and travel chaos has been widespread. The Cemex UK plant at South Ferriby was flooded. There has been thunder and lightning, hail and even tornadoes in London. It's not all bad news though: Roof repair firms and umbrella salesmen are working overtime.
Politicians were late to the party but have started to introduce funds for flood-hit residents. Prime Minister David Cameron even went so far as to say that 'money is no object' with reference to flood remediation. For now the weather is calm and some of the 'problems with the rain' are being solved.
Of course, the extreme wet and wild weather that the UK is experiencing is only part of the northern hemisphere's interesting start to 2014. In North America earlier in the year, a Polar Vortex air-system slipped from the top of the world into places it very rarely goes, causing freezing havoc in Canada and the northern States of the US as well as causing unusually unsettled weather as far south as Florida. Less extreme conditions (but still very coldweather) revisited the region at the end of February 2014.
The bizarre conditions are not limited to the western hemisphere. In the first week of the 'Winter' Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, temperatures hit 8°C in the mountains, much higher than the maximum seasonal average. At sea level the temperatures hit 17°C, warmer than some days at the London 2012 Summer Olympics!
Elsewhere, Australia has seen very dry conditions continuing a recent pattern of droughts and floods. In 2013 its weather forecasters had to 'invent a new colour' to graphically show temperatures above 50°C. In the Philippines, Typhoon Haiyan (one of the strongest ever) destroyed towns and villages in November 2013. It happened well out of the normal typhoon season.
So what, if anything, is causing this? The link between uneven changes in global surface and air temperatures and unusual weather patterns is now well known. When temperature hotspots change, air pressures change and wind patterns move. This can potentially drive air masses together that would never previously have been next to each other, resulting in unusual climatic events as have been seen of late.
Make no mistake, I am not an environmental scientist. The relationship above is a likely chain of interactions that have been stated and restated by many. However, when I see apples falling from a tree in England (a sign of September or October) at the same time as daffodils are on the roadside (a sign of mid-March) happening together in February, I am inclined to think that we might be seeing some climatic changes.
Could these patterns become more frequent, like the El-Niño Pacific Ocean current phenomenon? Hopefully not. However, only after events like these happen again will we have any idea how much their frequency has really changed. Will the 'every 100 year storm' become the 'every 10 year storm?' We will know more in 10 years.
Human activity, including cement making, has unarguably had detrimental environmental effects in some locations and cleaning up a plant's emissions, for example lowering NOx and SO2 limits in North America and Europe, can result in rapid environmental improvement. The Global EnviroCem Conference & Exhibition will focus on reducing cement plant emissions to air.
But is the cement industry contributing to the currently-observed changing weather patterns via its oft-quoted 5-8% of global CO2 emissions? What do you think? Vote above by 19 March 2014 to register your opinion. This month it is the global cement industry that gets The Last Word...