Coping with climate change

Steve Hobson Editor Motor Transport

Despite the UK transport industry’s best efforts to decarbonise, the Met Office is pretty gloomy about the effects we are already seeing from climate change. It now looks very unlikely that the rise in global temperatures will be kept below 2°C and that means we need to focus on mitigating the effects of climate change, as well as doing our best to prevent it.

Warming of the land, seas and air will lead to hotter, drier summers, more droughts, rising sea levels, possibly more violent storms and more flooding, especially in low-lying coastal areas like East Anglia.

Last year we saw record temperatures of over 40°C, which may become the norm rather than the exception in the next three decades. This will mean offices and warehouses will need more aircon to make them usable in summer. Sleeper cabs may become uninhabitable without cooling independent of the engine as night time temperatures also increase.

Not only roads will be affected. When the UK’s rail tracks get hotter than 46°C –roughly equivalent to air temperatures of around 30°C – they can start to buckle, so operators planning to shift containers to rail as part of their decarbonisation strategy may need a road-based back-up plan. Assuming the road surface isn’t also melting in the heat.

And switching to electric trucks only makes sense if the electricity is produced from renewable sources. Ironically, stronger winds could reduce the electricity produced by wind turbines as they are designed to operate only in wind speeds below around 55mph – storm force 10 in old money. Although the Met Office says there is little conclusive evidence that climate change is causing more storms, it is logical to predict that more energy in the atmosphere might increase the frequency and severity of storms around our coasts.

The road to net zero isn’t easy!