Climate change or just crazy weather? The Climate Question | BBC World Service

0:00 The psychology of it is very complicated.

0:02 People switch off, and I think you have to pick

0:06 your moments of discussing climate change where it really, really does matter.

0:10 Try making a weekly programme about climate change, Matt!

0:14 Today we're going to answer one of the most searched climate questions.

0:19 What's the difference between weather and the climate?

0:23 From the BBC World Service, I'm Jordan Dunbar and a few weeks ago,

0:26 Graihagh Jackson and I got to find out.

0:32 Our guest today is Matt Taylor, lead weather forecaster at the BBC,

0:37 and I'd say one of the UK's most recognisable forecasters.

0:41 Welcome Matt, thanks so much.

0:42 Thank you very much for having me.

0:43 Pleasure to be here.

0:44 Matt, my question is, you've been doing this for 20 years.

0:48 Weather presenters are quite famous

0:49 for getting themselves into sticky situations,

0:51 because you broadcast from farms and beside the sea.

0:55 What's your favourite story from the last 20 years of presenting the weather?

1:00 Ooh I think I've broadcast from just about everywhere now.

1:04 One of my favourites, which is not one of the sticky stories,

1:07 was actually broadcasting and meeting David Attenborough.

1:11 I was doing outside broadcast at a London Wetlands Centre,

1:14 he was there to promote the Big Butterfly Count,

1:17 he was there to be interviewed as well.

1:19 I did my forecast, he was sitting and I was really conscious while

1:22 I was doing my forecast on air because we do work without scripts.

1:26 You have to remember so many facts just straight into the camera.

1:29 But I was very conscious all of a sudden

1:30 he'd swivelled round and his eyes were on me

1:33 and the second I finished he stood up

1:35 and applauded and said well done that was amazing.

1:38 And so it was like...

1:38 Oh, that's so nice!

1:41 Such a renowned broadcaster, such as David Attenborough,

1:44 saying that was just my moment made, my career made.

1:48 I bet.

1:49 What is the difference between weather and climate?

1:53 They're intrinsically linked.

1:55 Your weather is essentially what is happening to you day in, day out.

1:58 So is it raining?

2:00 Snowy?

2:00 Is it sunny?

2:02 Is it warm?

2:03 Is it cold?

2:03 Is it windy?

2:05 That is your day to day weather.

2:07 So it's what's impacting you on a day-to-day basis.

2:10 So what you plan around.

2:11 What you plan your day around, what you're wearing, where you're going to go.

2:15 Climate takes the sort of broader look and not just in day-to-day details.

2:21 You have to average what is happening with your weather over decades.

2:25 Generally, we think about 30 years.

2:27 30 years.

2:29 And then instead of saying, is it raining?

2:31 Is it snowy?

2:32 Is it sunny?

2:34 You then look at is it warming?

2:37 A warm climate?

2:38 A cold climate?

2:39 Is it a wet climate or a dry climate?

2:42 Those basically four essentials.

2:45 And then by clumping it together into those decades,

2:48 you can then compare how things change.

2:51 Is this a trend to see in the future?

2:53 What are the chances are we're going to see more of this in the feature?

2:56 And all the global climate models are showing that we are on this warming trend.

3:03 But in different parts of the world, it is different levels of it.

3:08 Climate change is almost a little victim of its

3:12 own success from a public perception point of view.

3:15 When I was growing up, when I went to school,

3:17 and there's a whole generation, we were taught about global warming.

3:21 And I think the global warming has got into some

3:24 people's brains in that it will warm all the time.

3:27 But we are talking about global warning.

3:29 The globe is warming.

3:30 But on a more local level, what we're seeing is the climate change.

3:35 Some getting hotter quicker than others,

3:37 some are getting wetter quicker than others,

3:39 some are actually getting drier than others.

3:41 And so that's why climate change is a bit more of a, more encompassing term,

3:47 a bit of an understandable one than say perhaps global warming.

3:50 It kind of gives a slight misconception that wherever you are,

3:54 you'll be seeing the temperature rise day on day off.

3:57 And why is the climate getting wetter in some

4:00 places and drier in others because of climate change?

4:04 It's down to how weather patterns are changing around the world.

4:10 When we look at a planet that's warming, an atmosphere that's warming,

4:14 the warmer the atmosphere is, the more moisture it holds.

4:18 And so some areas where you saw rainfall previously,

4:21 actually that rainfall is getting more intense.

4:23 The best way I can sort of describe it,

4:25 if you think of a bathroom, same bathroom,

4:28 running the tap, same temperature comes out.

4:29 If it is running in a sort of cold bathroom in the winter,

4:32 you see the condensation form very quickly.

4:36 And so the moisture starts to drip down the walls.

4:38 If that bathroom is much warmer, there is more moisture going into the bathroom.

4:43 And so it's longer before you start to see condensation.

4:46 And then when it does come down the wall, there's a lot more water coming out.

4:49 So it's the same sort of thing when we're talking about rain clouds.

4:52 The warmer the atmosphere, the more moisture there is,

4:56 the bigger those rain clouds will be and the heavier

4:59 the rain will be that comes from it.

5:01 I think the other confusing thing about this is that climate

5:04 change influences the weather that people experience day to day.

5:08 So can we just talk a little bit about how that happens and why?

5:12 It does.

5:13 As I said, they're both intrinsically linked.

5:15 There'll be parts of the world where

5:16 it will influence on a day-to-day basis weather.

5:19 When you see extremes in temperature, when it gets hot,

5:23 actually your hot days could be hotter

5:25 and more likely hotter than they were before.

5:27 Your wet days could actually be much wetter than they where before.

5:31 So your day-to-day still has the same variability,

5:34 and we'll always still have that same variability,

5:36 but you could be seeing some bit more extremes in what you see from day-to-day.

5:41 And it could also mean, and what a lot of places are seeing is,

5:45 the colder days are less, fewer frosts, less snowfall.

5:50 And this is the complicated thing about trying to convey it in that there will

5:55 be parts of the world where before they were quite cold and so you get snow,

6:01 but if you warm them up a little bit- you've got

6:04 to think the atmosphere is going to hold a bit more moisture,

6:07 the clouds are going to have that little bit more

6:09 in the way of moisture too- snowfall could actually get heavier at times.

6:13 So I think this is what causes a lot of confusion.

6:16 But, yeah, as the climate changes, it will influence your day-to-day weather.

6:20 Yeah, and you see in the Intergovernmental

6:22 Panel reports on climate change that, you know,

6:25 lots of extreme weather is going to become

6:27 either more extreme or more common as well.

6:32 Yes.

6:32 If you had a little graph, sort of a normal graph,

6:35 where you have your cold and warm extremes, your average in the middle,

6:39 basically what it's doing is moving everything a little bit up.

6:42 And so your hot extremes a little bit hotter, your cold extremes,

6:46 a little bit warmer, not as cold as it was.

6:49 And your average increases as well.

6:51 Okay, so then it's better to think

6:54 of it as the climate changing than simply warming.

7:01 Yes.

7:01 Warming globally, but actually on your local level your climate is changing.

7:06 And that doesn't mean it warms every single day,

7:08 it just means actually where it does warm,

7:11 it warmes more, or where it's wet, it gets wetter.

7:13 So it's a changing climate that can still have its cold spells,

7:18 can still have its dry spells,

7:20 but it doesn't you warm every single month after each other.

7:24 Do you ever make the link between climate change and weather in your reporting?

7:30 We do.

7:31 We do more so than ever before in that we

7:33 will try if there's some big world event,

7:38 even local, we can say, this is unusual.

7:41 This is not what you're normally seeing.

7:43 Climate change has had a footprint on that.

7:46 It's very difficult, always has been in the past,

7:48 to intrinsically link climate change to a specific

7:52 event because the studies weren't there.

7:54 You weren't able to do it.

7:56 And we have to remember that even though we will still get extremes,

8:02 we've always had extremes.

8:04 So making sure one, saying that one is

8:07 particularly linked to climate change is always very difficult.

8:09 But what we're finding now is that when you get more of these, it's

8:13 easier to say on air that actually this isn't normal for the time of year.

8:16 We still only have a fixed duration as weather presenters.

8:18 We've still got to get the forecast across.

8:20 But it's very important to us now just

8:22 to give a bit of wider context that people understand,

8:25 actually, is this normal for where we live?

8:28 Is this extreme?

8:29 Are we going to see more of this?

8:31 So 10 years ago, you could be

8:33 waiting several months before you saw whether climate

8:36 change had a fingerprint on a specific event

8:40 which already had gone out of people's mind.

8:43 But these days you're talking, some attribution studies can be done within days

8:47 or a week or so of an event taking place.

8:50 And it's done by almost running two models next to each other.

8:55 One in which we've had that influence,

8:58 and you take out the human influence of climate change in the other model.

9:04 And you run them to work out actually what is the probability of that happening?

9:09 Was it more likely, less likely?

9:12 Has a weather event been more intense because of human influence?

9:18 So these modelling techniques, attribution studies,

9:21 have come on leaps and bounds much,

9:23 much quicker and help us to convey to the audience

9:26 of what is normal and what is not.

9:28 And why something has happened.

9:30 Everybody wants to know why something has happened, the curiosity of people.

9:34 I was going to say, do people

9:35 appreciate the fact that you're linking climate change,

9:38 or do they take an opposite or opposing view?

9:41 You get both views.

9:44 Like everything, I think social media has been a big driver.

9:47 You get very polarised views.

9:49 There are some who will still go out

9:52 of their way to deny anything has happened, anything's changed.

9:56 This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientists agree

10:02 our world is warming and it's because of the influence we've had.

10:06 But also, I get messages off people who

10:09 want me to mention every single weather event saying,

10:12 well, you haven't mentioned that it's a warm day, this is wrong, this is wrong.

10:16 But actually, you have to find that middle

10:19 ground of what is backed up by science,

10:23 and also trying to remind people that we still, we've always had extremes,

10:28 but also just trying to guide people to what

10:32 extremes are sort of normal extremes, and what aren't.

10:35 Do you find that personally quite hard

10:37 because sometimes it's not just it's not happening,

10:40 it can be quite a personal attack, I find.

10:43 It's hugely personal, quite often.

10:46 I suppose the biggest one was when we hit 40°C in the UK.

10:52 The amount of personal attacks you got off that were quite phenomenal.

10:58 It is Britain's hottest day ever.

11:00 The UK record temperature was broken today and the Met Office

11:05 has just said that 40°C has now been broken at Heathrow.

11:10 Indeed.

11:11 An historical and fairly sobering day, I think, for UK climates today.

11:14 The daytime one has certainly gone.

11:15 At 1 pm, as you've already heard, the first 40°C day here in the UK at Heathrow.

11:21 Why are they attacking you?

11:22 Because this is, this was record breaking weather affected everyone.

11:26 Where I was, there was no electricity because the substation caught fire.

11:29 Clearly out of the norm.

11:31 Well, it had a big impact, and it wasn't just an isolated station.

11:36 Hundreds of stations across the UK broke records.

11:40 So it's not once.

11:41 Some claim it's fiddling with data.

11:46 I'm just here to report what has happened.

11:50 That was my job.

11:51 And it was there playing out in real time what was happening.

11:56 But some felt it was some sort of manipulation of data

12:04 to try and persuade people that climate change was happening rather than,

12:09 well, no, no, no this is playing out on your front doorstep now.

12:13 We've never seen this in the UK before.

12:15 It was highly unlikely.

12:16 We never thought we'd see this for, even

12:18 though climate scientists had warned about it,

12:20 it seemed to occur much earlier than

12:23 we were prepared for, certainly as presenters.

12:26 And straight away it was seen as, you're lying to us.

12:32 You're lying to us.

12:34 I think I saw people relating it to the 1970s.

12:38 There had been a heat wave where it had been very,

12:41 very hot and people were saying, this isn't new.

12:44 We had this in the 1970's.

12:46 Yes.

12:46 And that was what was confusing?

12:49 It is.

12:50 1976 is the one that everybody sort of harks back to.

12:54 And that was an incredible summer in terms of heat and duration of heat.

13:02 Reservoirs in the authorities' area have been steadily drying up for months.

13:06 It's worst in Northamptonshire,

13:08 where several important reservoirs are now only a third full.

13:11 At Pittsford, a road which was flooded when the reservoir was created 20

13:15 years ago can be seen and driven on for the first time ever.

13:20 Boreholes used to supply local farms have dried up,

13:22 and farmers had to improvise to get supplies for their homes and livestock.

13:28 Several reservoirs have had to be closed down,

13:30 increasing the strain on the remaining ones.

13:33 The wonderful heat wave soon caused problems as drought set in.

13:38 For the first time in British history, water had to be rationed.

13:43 Water has been turned off tonight to tens of thousands of homes

13:47 and supplies will not be turned on again until 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.

13:52 By driving round the town in a somewhat ostentatious van,

13:55 the patrolmen hope to discourage the use of sprinklers

13:58 and hose pipes without having to bring a prosecution.

14:01 We never got to the levels we did though in 2022.

14:04 And this comes back to almost your local view,

14:09 rather than taking a global view of things.

14:12 If you looked at how temperatures vary compared to normal across the globe,

14:18 we were in a small little dot where temperatures were unusually high.

14:24 This time around, this dot of heat expanded much much bigger, a huge wide area.

14:33 So even though '76 it was very hot here,

14:36 globally it was insignificant compared to what

14:39 other things are going around the globe.

14:40 But this time, you look back at 2022, huge portions of the globe are heated up,

14:45 and that is the signature of a changing climate.

14:48 And I think the problem with climate change,

14:53 people get very weary, very quickly.

14:56 It's...

14:58 the psychology of it is very complicated.

15:01 People switch off.

15:02 And I think you have to pick your moments

15:04 of discussing climate change where it really, really does matter.

15:08 Try making a weekly programme about climate change, Matt!

15:12 It's very difficult.

15:14 And there is a whole psychology around climate change

15:16 in that people don't just want to hear doom and gloom.

15:18 They want to hear what can be done, how they can help.

15:22 Are there positives to it in that, people

15:25 are doing stuff that makes a difference.

15:27 Some people say we over-warn,

15:30 but actually warning people has saved thousands of lives across the world.

15:34 You look at just the Philippines, we saw Haiyan,

15:39 the impact that had to human life when that...

15:41 That was a cyclone?

15:42 Typhoon Haiyan which had a huge, huge impact across the Philippines.

15:48 One of the strongest storms ever recorded has

15:50 torn through the central islands of the Philippines,

15:53 causing landslides and flash floods.

15:55 When super typhoon Haiyan hit land,

15:57 it triggered a storm surge that inundated coastal villages,

16:01 roofs were ripped off houses, and power lines were brought down.

16:04 The Filipino authorities say more than 12 million people are at risk.

16:08 Off the back of that improved modelling, computer modelling,

16:11 and warning systems meant that the ones we saw last year,

16:16 the loss of life was minimal compared

16:19 to that because we've got better at warning people.

16:22 We've got best understanding the impacts

16:23 that weather can have in various places.

16:29 We should say, although you're here in London at the BBC,

16:29 you do do the world's weather as well.

16:31 Oh, we do, yes.

16:32 So my job can be anything from forecasting

16:36 for small county level somewhere in the United Kingdom,

16:39 and the next minute I could be broadcasting to somewhere, Vietnam, Australia.

16:45 I'll tell you something though.

16:46 My world knowledge is brilliant.

16:47 If you ever want me for a pub quiz...

16:49 Yeah.

16:50 Capitals and cities?

16:53 But no, you have to have a good knowledge of what's going on.

16:57 And also have to have an idea of what is normal in certain parts of the world,

17:02 and trying to convey that in what's quite often a short bulletin.

17:06 Is something going to be warmer than normal, colder than normal?

17:08 This is not right for this time of year,

17:10 or this is as you'd expect in say April.

17:15 Is it getting harder for you to forecast

17:17 the extreme weather as the climate changes.

17:22 Is that getting more difficult?

17:24 I wouldn't say it's getting more difficult as such,

17:27 all because the computer power has changed,

17:29 computer modelling's changed as well.

17:32 I think it's just the fact that some of the extremes are so extreme,

17:38 it makes it sometimes difficult to realise, oh, wait a minute,

17:44 this is even more than even we were expecting.

17:47 I think the extremes are modelled fairly, fairly well.

17:53 But I think as we go forward in the future,

17:56 as computers get quicker, influence of other things,

17:59 that we might be able to pinpoint areas better than we could do in the past.

18:03 Yeah, because I remember for one of the hurricanes in the last

18:06 couple of years that was in the Atlantic and it hit the US,

18:09 one of the meteorologists forecasting it actually

18:13 choked up and cried because he was so shocked at how quickly that hurricane had

18:19 intensified in 24 hours, I think it was.

18:21 There have been a few occasions of that.

18:22 And I think that, maybe it is the speed at which

18:25 things can intensify which sometimes computer models don't quite get.

18:30 I still think they're doing a fantastic job

18:31 and they did a great job in forecasting track direction,

18:35 but the speed at which some of the hurricanes accelerated,

18:41 intensified last year were off the scale.

18:45 And even here in the UK from, this is just me talking about my own experience,

18:49 we now, I think, see peaks in heat quicker than we used to.

18:55 When we used see warm days, it used to build up over several days.

18:59 It seems to happen in a much shorter space of time,

19:02 which could be again, part of this warming climate.

19:07 And what about the forecast of a few days out?

19:09 I think you mentioned five days that we're working on.

19:12 Is that going to get more difficult?

19:15 Is the accuracy going to go down as climate change continues to have an effect?

19:20 I think they're always adapting computer

19:21 models and they're looking at the dynamics, the equations which go into it.

19:26 So I actually think we will probably increase the accuracy.

19:30 This is something really for the computer modellers themselves.

19:34 But you look even now,

19:36 the accuracy of a four day forecast is what a one day forecast was 30 years ago.

19:44 So the accuracy is increasing.

19:46 Our perception might change, because we've all got these apps on our phones.

19:51 But actually, when you grind down into the details,

19:54 the accuracy has increased hugely from what we had just decades ago.

19:58 And I can't see us really taking a step back from that.

20:01 Do you not think even in 20,

20:03 30 years time when our climate might be 2.5°C warmer than pre-industrial times,

20:09 that we'll still be able to get that level of accuracy that we do today?

20:13 I think we will.

20:14 I think the computer models will adapt with time.

20:16 We've already seen it.

20:17 The forecasts for the exceptional heats, which we talked about in Canada,

20:22 which would have been virtually impossible without climate change.

20:25 The computer models were in the rough,

20:28 sort of rough ballpark of what we were going to expect.

20:32 The same too in the UK.

20:33 Even a week in advance, they were showing up temperatures of over 40°C.

20:38 Maybe one or two forecasts were a little bit more extreme, but still.

20:42 To forecast the temperature over 40°C, I'd never seen it for the UK in the near

20:47 30 years that I've been involved in weather.

20:50 We've talked a lot about how computer models

20:52 and taking data from the past is so important,

20:54 as well as all the data you're getting in right now to talk about the weather.

20:59 Is artificial intelligence going to play a big part then in keeping it accurate?

21:06 Artificial intelligence is very good in short term modelling.

21:10 And I think AI will have a big part in forecasting those severe events,

21:15 localised events in the future.

21:17 And it already is starting to do so.

21:20 Because it uses less computing power, it can also do it quicker.

21:23 You can run the computer model more times a day.

21:26 At the moment, because of the amount

21:28 of computing power needed in traditional weather models,

21:31 you only run them four or five, maybe six times a day.

21:35 But you could run these many, many, many times over.

21:38 So in short-term events,

21:39 they could perhaps pinpoint severe weather much, much quicker,

21:44 and help warning systems,

21:46 than we'd normally see from traditional weather models.

21:49 When it comes to climate modelling though,

21:54 because AI basically learns from the past, our climate's changed from the past.

22:02 So it would have to have a certain bit

22:05 of learning from the scientists to help it along.

22:08 So the physical computer weather models that we

22:11 have now will still be there doing it.

22:14 AI probably will be a part of it though.

22:16 Now, Matt, I know weather forecasting was like a dream job of yours as a child.

22:20 Oh, it was, completely.

22:21 Has it turned out to be everything you wanted it to be?

22:23 Oh, everything and more.

22:25 I've been incredibly lucky.

22:27 I got obsessed with weather from the age of four or five years old.

22:30 I grew up in Scotland.

22:31 The weather changed every five minutes there.

22:35 And I, even from that age, I just wanted to be a weather forecaster.

22:39 It was a bit of a rocky road to get there,

22:41 but I got there and I get paid on a daily basis to wax lyrical about my passion,

22:47 something I love, something I'm, let's be honest,

22:49 very geeky about most of the time.

22:51 Even wife and kids will roll their eyes, and most of my pictures when I come

22:56 home from a holiday of various clouds I've seen.

22:59 But no, I'm incredibly lucky and doing it where I do,

23:02 I also get to see huge parts of the UK, which I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

23:07 I'm just imagining you showing your family

23:09 album and it's just littered with clouds.

23:11 Honestly, it's a joke.

23:12 They say you've got more pictures of clouds than you have of the kids, dad!

23:17 Well, Matt Taylor, thank you so much for joining us today.

23:19 It's been a pleasure.

23:21 Thanks Matt.

23:21 And thank you for watching.

23:22 If you've got a climate question, you can drop it in the comments below.

23:26 And don't forget to like this video so that we know to make more.

23:29 And subscribe to the BBC World Service YouTube channel so you don't miss out.

23:33 I'm Graihagh Jackson.

23:34 I'm Jordan Dunbar, see you next time.