UK environmental challenges
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- Created by: Janeway
- Created on: 09-04-19 12:33
Air masses and how they affect the UK weather
- Tropical maritime air masses come from the Atlantic - they bring in warm, moist air and mild weather
- Example - February 2014,strong winds and winter storms, damaged SW railway
- Polar maritime air masses come from Greenland and the arctic sea - they bring wet, cold air and cold, showery weather
- Arctic Maritime air masses come from the arctic - they bring wet, cold air and snow
- Example - 2009-2010 had most severe snow since 1981-1982. 10-20cm in England and Wales with 30cm in Scotland
- Polar Continental air masses come from central Europe - they bring:
- Hot air and dry summers
- Cold air and snow in winters
- Example - Beast from the East brought air from Russia
- Tropical Continental air masses come from North Africa - they bring hot, dry air and hot weather in summer
- Example - In 2003, most extreme heatwave for 500 yrs. UK record temperature of 38.5
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Case Study: UK Flood Event: Somerset Levels
Effects of flooding:
Enviromental:
- 6, 900 hectares of agricultural land was underwater for over a month
- Natural England reported that floods had little impact on wildlife
- Farm soil ruined
Economic:
- Financial cost to the Somerset economy was between £82million - £147 million
- Many livestock had to be moved and sold
- Local businesses lost trade and people couldn't work
- Fram soil ruined
Social:
- 600 homes affected
- villages such as Muchelney cut off
- Journey times longer as roads were inacessible
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Case Study: UK Flood Event: Somerset Levels
Causes of flooding:
- Physical:
- Prolonged rain, hurricane force wind speeds and tidal surges
- Storm cause by a powerful jet stream driving low-pressure systems and their storms across the Atlantic
- 12 major storms from Dec 2013-Feb 2014
- Human:
- Builings on Floodplain below sea level
- Rivers should have dredged - it had not been dredged for 20 yrs - River Parret in particular needed to be dredged
Management
- Enviroment Agency installed 62 pumps to remove 1.5mill tonnes of water
- Royal Marines deployed
- In Mar 2014, government wrote 20 yr flood plan - dredging rivers, repairing flood banks, raising roads and building tidal barriers
- Giant pumps brought in from the Netherlands
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Farming and fishing
Mechanisation of Farming:
- Machinery replaced work previously done by hand
- Farms have increased in size
- destruction of hedgerows
- consumers want produce year round - less fertiile soil
- more pesticides and fertilisers - impacts local water supplies (eutrophication-nutrients drain into water which causes an agal bloom-uses up all the oxygen + blocks out sunlight)
Commercial Fishing:
- Over 1 bill people relying on fish
- Large trawlers locate fish socks
- over fishing
- young fish caught and so they can't breed and certain fish are in decline (tuna and cod)
- accidental deaths of other species (dolphins)
- In 1900s the ocean contained 6x more fish
- In 2003, a scientific report estimated large ocean predators reduced to just 10% of of pre-industrial population
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Water usage and management
- 40% of water is for domestic use
- 40% is for energy
- 19% is for industry
- 1% is for agriculture
Management:
- Reservoirs:
- Large area of water to capture and store water
- expensive to construct and maintain
- disrupts natural flow of water
- floods a lot of land - can't build in those areas - plants drown
- chemical imbalance in soil means it can't be used as farmland
- Water transfer scheme:
- take water from 1 part of the UK where there's a surplus, to part that's running low
- often transferred via rivers, canals or pipelines
- impacts local ecology - different water chemistry
- introduces non-native invasive species which can threaten new ecosystem
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UK energy sources
- Oil and natural gas
- Pipes sunk down to reservoirs to pump oil out - refined into petroleum and used intransport
- Coal
- Nuclear
- Mining radioactive minerals. Electricity generated from the energy released when atoms of the minerals are split or joined together
- Wind
- Solar
- Tidal
- Tidal barrage built across estuaries. Movement of tides used to drve turbines
- Wave
- Use the up and down motion of waves to force air/hydraulic fluid in and out of chambers to drive a turbine
- Biomass
- Geothermal
- Cold water pumped under ground and comes out as steam - heating or drives turbines
- Hydro
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Sustainable energy
UK Targets -
- EU set UK a target of ensuring 32% of itselectricity comes from renewables by 2030
- Get 15% of all energy from renewables by 2020
- UK has a carbon budget to meet, agreed during 2008 climate change act
Recent Developments -
- 2010 - 2013, department of energy + climate change recorded £31 bill of private investment in renewables supporting over 35,000 jobs
- 2014, £10 bill invested in renewables
- 2015, government published plans to cut subsidies for renewables
UK Strategies -
- Renewable heat incentive
- Promote offshore wind farms and research wave energy
- create up to 50000 jobs n renewable energy sector by 2020
- reduce UK's carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels
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