Scotland’s housing, infrastructure and transport networks must all be rethought due to the mounting threat of climate-induced extreme weather, scientists have warned.
Even iconic landmarks like Edinburgh Castle – famously on top of a hill – are now at risk of flooding, research has shown. Abertay Uni expert Dr Rebecca Wade said the country is entering a “different climate regime” with rapid and “surprising” warming in recent years bringing ever more volatile conditions.
And Dr Kate Donovan, co-director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, said everyone living in coastal areas or cities – all of which are built around large rivers in Scotland – were becoming increasingly vulnerable. The pair were speaking on Scotland’s new climate science podcast hosted by eco influencer Laura Young.
It comes as the country continues to count the cost of Storm Eowyn which brought destructive hurricane-force winds to Scotland on Friday. Dr Wade said: “Our wetter days are going to get wetter, our drier days are going to get more frequent [with] perhaps longer periods of dry days, our hotter days are going to get hotter.
“We’re looking at a different climate regime in Scotland.” She said it meant a fresh look is needed from “an engineering and infrastructure perspective” at “everything we build in our built environment to help us communicate, connect, transport and live”.
Dr Wade added: “If we’re looking at a different climate regime, we need to think differently about the way that we build buildings, the materials that we use for a start… Can they be tolerant of damp in really wet conditions… but also physically tolerant of winds and wet weather and storms that are more likely to come our way?
“Can they also be cool enough during hot periods so that we’re not having to start embedding air conditioning across Scotland, in all of our buildings, which we’re really not set up for?”
Dr Donovan said some Scots may have previously thought of awful floods and droughts happening in places like Bangladesh or Africa – but that’s changing. She said: “We are starting to see flood events happening that are unusual, that are really big, maybe really rapid, happening in the middle of summer, perhaps catching us off guard.
“Maybe a lot of people thought, ‘oh, it’s never going to happen to me.’ We now definitely are experiencing the impacts of climate change right here in the UK, Ireland, and Scotland.”
Dr Donovan continued: “We’ve seen recently some really awful flooding events that have affected many communities across Scotland. People who are flooded are often out of their homes for many, many months, even years. It’s very traumatic…
“We’ve had some pretty unusual floods as well. We did some research recently where Edinburgh Castle was flooded, and if anyone’s been to Edinburgh, you’ll know that it’s on top of a hill. So not necessarily the place that everyone thinks is going to get flooded.
“But the rainfall event was so short, sudden and severe and unusual that it was like a river system coming down through the castle complex. It happened just after Covid in 2021, so there weren’t so many tourists, which was very lucky – because actually it was quite dangerous and the water just streamed inside.
“And it took Historic Environment Scotland quite a long time to recover from that – about six months to get those rooms back and open to tourists again. That was a 15-minute rainfall event that caused some major damage in one of our most well known historic buildings.”
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