Climate change is damaging UK’s historic sites
Climate change is destroying some of the UK’s historic sites, according to a report from Leeds University and the Climate Coalition, a group of 130 organisations dedicated to climate action. Wordsworth House, home of poet William Wordsworth, has been damaged by two recent climate change-related floods. Birling Gap, which is part of the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs, suffered seven years’ worth of erosion in two months during the storms of 2013-14. The 5,000-year-old Skara Brae village on Orkney faces possible destruction from storms. Rising temperatures are also causing the loss of salmon and bird species.

Lord’s has become the first cricket ground in the country to run on 100% renewable energy, as new figures reveal the increasing disruption to cricket caused by extreme weather patterns linked to climate change.

New statistics released by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), owners of Lord’s, illustrate that extreme weather in December 2015, which has been linked to climate change, caused more than £3.5 million worth of damage across 57 cricket clubs. Increased rainfall is also causing significant loss of fixtures in recreational cricket and impacting on the professional game.

The announcement launches the annual “Show The Love” campaign from The Climate Coalition and accompanies the publication of a “Weather Warning” report analysed by the Priestley International Centre for Climate. The report highlights how extreme weather conditions are affecting some of Britain’s favourite places, from gardens and pubs to cliffs and woodlands and churches to cricket pitches.

Professor Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate, said: “UK weather will always bowl us the odd googly but climate change is making them harder to defend against. The science has now developed to the point where we can say whether the likelihood of a particular bout of weather has been increased by climate change. We know that climate change made the record wet weather in December 2015 considerably more likely. The trend towards more intense rainfall is clear and it’s great to see MCC, ECB and The Climate Coalition raising awareness of these challenges that aren’t just affecting people in other countries but are having impacts right here in the UK.’

Two extreme weather events linked to climate change in the past eight years have caused extensive damage to Wordsworth’s childhood home whilst the iconic chalk cliffs at Birling Gap have seen increased rates of erosion due to heavy rainfall, sea-level rise and an increase in the regularity of storm events. The report also found that Slimbridge Wetlands Centre in Gloucestershire, founded by Sir Peter Scott, has recorded changes in bird species at the centre which have been linked to changes in temperature.

Read The Climate Coalition’s press release: ShowTheLoveLordsLaunchPR

Read the Weather Warning report: Weather warning report