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Drought media briefing at the Science Media Centre

Jamie Hannaford presents drought science to journalists at the Science Media Centre briefing
Jamie Hannaford presents drought science to journalists at the Science Media Centre briefing

Three experts from About Drought provided journalists with an insight into the impact of the UK summer drought – Jamie Hannaford, Professor Jim Hall and Professor Ian Holman. Answering questions from the Daily Mail, Press Association, BBC, Telegraph and Financial Times they presented detailed but accessible information on the pressure on water resources, highlighting the way new data from the programme is already supporting decision-makers, such as the Environment Agency. Articles were published in the Daily Mail, The Sun, Telegraph and Mail Online.

Articles which followed the Science Media Centre briefing on 4th September 2018
Jim Hall and Ian Holman answer journalists’ questions at the Science Media Centre briefing

About Drought briefing note: Which farming areas of England and Wales are most at risk from economic losses due to drought?

Image of briefing note front cover
Briefing note on farming and economic losses due to drought

This briefing note looks at the effects of water scarcity and drought on crops which require supplemental irrigation, and includes some ideas on steps which may help to mitigate losses to farmers. This is the first of a series of briefs to support improved decision making in relation to droughts and water scarcity.

We are currently experiencing a heatwave in the UK and other parts of Europe – with a hosepipe ban in place in Ireland. Climatic change causes greater unreliability of rainfall in wetter countries like the UK, as well as increased frequency of droughts, leading to higher demand for irrigation to supplement rainfall. The yield and quality of crops of fruit and vegetables can be lowered by short-term drought in the UK summer – this can be avoided by using irrigation to supplement rainfall, enabling farmers to continue to provide supermarket-quality produce.

DRY Weather and an allotment – what would you do on the allotment with less water?

Wed 23 May 2018, 10:00 – 16:00
Location: UWE Frenchay, BS16 1QY
Event organiser: UWE
Event type: Public workshop
Booking: Register online

The workshop will be hosted by the NERC DRY (Drought Risk and You) project, the National Allotment and Leisure Gardeners Association (NSALG) and About Drought (knowledge exchange about drought).

Background: In the DRY project, we are keen to work with different groups who may be able to give early warning of dry conditions in their communities and who are already aware of when there is a lack of rain and when the soils are dry. Allotment holders are one such group. We are also interested in different ways of using water in growing food (e.g. across cultures) and the seasonal demands that different crops have for water.

Aims and outcomes:

At this workshop, we will:

  • share story and videos developed with allotment holders and Allan Cavell, NSALG in the DRY (Drought Risk and You) project.
  • ask ‘What if’ for different drought risk futures under different climate projections in the Bristol Frome catchment. We will share some of the new science on forecasting and prediction in easily accessible ways so we can think about what the implications might be for growing on allotments.
  • explore together what we might do on an allotment with less water. What options are available?
  • seek your advice about what sorts of resources would be useful as outcomes from the UK Drought and Water Scarcity research. What would be useful to allotment holders? (e.g. seasonal water advice; drought resistant planting).

The day will be interactive and we will have a cartoonist working with us to capture our discussions.

Who will this workshop interest? Allotment groups who have worked with the DRY project, other ‘growing’/ ‘food’ groups, those interested in community adaptation to water risk and climate change, those involved in plant growing/horticulture in different ways, those involved in teaching, and others…

FAQs

There is no cost for the workshop but we ask you to register by clicking this link by 18th May 2018. A buffet lunch will be provided so, if you have specific dietary requirements, please email dry@uwe.ac.uk.

For information on how to get to UWE Bristol please visit http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/about/visitus/howtofindus.aspx

If you are coming by car you will need a parking space to be booked for you. Please email dry@uwe.ac.uk with your car registration details.

For more information on the DRY projecthttp://dryproject.co.uk; NSALG www.nsalg.org.uk; and About Drought https://aboutdrought.info/

Civil Society, risk and climate change: science, perception, communication and exchange

Wed 16 May 2018, 10:30 – 16:00
Location: UWE Bristol
Event organiser: ESRC Seminar Series CASCADE-NET
Event type: Seminar
Booking: Register online

The Centre for Water, Communities and Resilience and the Science Communication Unit at UWE together with Climate Outreach are pleased to announce a one day workshop exploring the interface between science communication, the arts and community resilience in the context of climate change and extreme weather.

For further information about the aims of CASCADE-NET see: http://www.cascade-net.com/aims/

Alison Tickell, CEO of Julie’s Bicycle will open the workshop with a Key Note relating her experiences working with creative industries on sustainability, and the opportunities for utilising their influential voices to reach new audiences on climate change.

She will be joined by speakers from academia and practice, including Sam Illingworth (Manchester Metropolitan University), Stuart Capstick (Cardiff University), Luci Gorell Barnes (Artist) Lyndsey Bakewell (Loughborough University), Corra Boushel (UWE) and Adam Corner (Climate Outreach).

The day will include a mix of provocative presentations followed by facilitated discussion exploring questions including:

1. What are the challenges and constraints of communicating about climate change and extreme weather (e.g. challenges of communicating complexity)

2. How might creative arts approaches be employed to open discussions about climate change and extreme weather? (use of case study examples to open discussion) (also how can these approaches help to overcome the challenges of communicating complex risks, like extreme weather)

3. How could arts, science and community work together to build resilience?

Spaces are limited and early booking is advised. Please sign up by Tuesday 8th May 2018.

Meet the Researchers: Drought Risk and You

Mon 30 April 2018, 10:00 – 12:30
Location: UWE Frenchay, BS16 1QY
Event organiser: UWE
Event type: Public open day
Booking: Register online

Join University of the West of England for a field trip with the researchers to discover the real-life effects of drought on our local grasslands, as part of Bristol Festival of Nature’s City Nature Challenge.

DRY project field site at UWE, copyright UWE
DRY project field site at UWE, copyright UWE

The Drought Risk and You project integrates physical science with social science and narrative to produce a decision making tool to help individuals and policy makers plan their response to drought.

Drought is a natural part of the UK climate but is predicted to become more frequent and severe in the future. Grasslands are by area the most important agricultural crop in the UK, and an essential feature of most parks and gardens.

You will learn about the experiments being done by UWE’s researchers as they look at the effects of drought on plants and pollinators, learn about the types of measurement they make and why, and see some of the preliminary results. You can also help the team by making your own survey transect across the field and submit your findings to Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre.

Booking essential, details of where to meet and parking available on application.For more information please contact: dry@uwe.ac.uk

Please note: we will be meeting on UWE’s Frenchay campus and walking down to the research site through a rough woodland track. The track and fieldsite are not accessible for wheelchairs or pushchairs. Please dress appropriately for working outdoors.This event is suitable for adults and older children (10+).

News review: perceptions of water in Britain

Print media reacted to the Environment Agency’s briefing in early January on low groundwater levels and the prospect of a summer drought with headlines ranging from ‘Floody drought’ (The Sun) to ‘Drenched by the wrong kind of rain’ (The i).  As Southern Water applied for an abstraction permit journalists were given a background briefing putting the application into context.

UK Drought Jan 2018 print media montage by Sally Stevens, Institute for Environmental Analytics
UK Drought Jan 2018 print media montage by Sally Stevens, Institute for Environmental Analytics

‘Floody Drought’, ‘Drenched by the wrong type of rain’: headlines that pick up the contradictory nature of Britain’s relationship with water and an underpinning perception that Britain is a land of plenty – at least when it comes to water. But hiding behind these headlines, published in January 2018, is the real challenge: for the British Isles rely on fairly regular rainfall and rather wet winters to ensure a plentiful water supply.

As the headlines suggest, the South East experienced a dry autumn and, if followed by a dry winter, the area would have been at risk of drought in summer 2018. This would not have meant standpipes in the streets and we were not approaching day zero (when the city runs out of water), as Cape Town had. But the result of the Environment Agency’s briefing should have provided pause for thought and an opportunity for communities to consider their drought resilience (and the measures they could take now to mitigate against the risk of hosepipe bans in the summer). But it didn’t.

Trying to engage the public and communities with the risks of water shortage is hard at the best of times. Britain is perceived to be a rather wet island surrounded by plenty of water. This challenge to communication, though, is particularly hard in the winter because there is a perceptual link between drought and hot weather. If it’s not hot, it can’t be a drought. This perception makes winter droughts amongst the most challenging to communicate. How do you explain to someone who perceives that it’s dull and overcast (and therefore wet) that we’re heading for a drought?

And so we return to the wrong type of headlines. ‘Floody drought’ may be an attempt to link text to the water cycle, but how does it help people to understand that indeed drought may be followed by floods? Better a headline linking flood to the wrong type of rain. Headline writers love a contradiction: ‘Drenched UK might still see a hosepipe ban’ fits the bill but doesn’t help to address the problem of water resources and growing demand.

Newspapers may seek to grab our attention through these contradictory headlines, but unless readers go beyond the headline and start to understand Britain’s complex relationship with water, they will only reinforce stereotypes. In the face of climate change, it’s time to change those stereotypes.

Event debrief: Seasonal Forecasting – Meeting User Needs

The About Drought programme collaborated with the British Hydrological Society, University of Reading and University of Loughborough to present a national workshop on seasonal forecasting.

Rebecca Emberton (University of Reading) presenting to BHS meeting in January 2018, copyright Nevil Quinn UWE
Rebecca Emberton (University of Reading) presenting to BHS meeting in January 2018, copyright Nevil Quinn UWE

The aim of the workshop, held in Loughborough in January 2018, was to focus on the seasonal forecast needs of users and practitioners, and to identify ways of improving the dissemination, uptake and operationalisation of seasonal forecasts by the water and agricultural sectors.

Reliable seasonal forecasts can support planning of water resources for a variety of purposes, including allocation for urban and rural water supply, irrigation scheduling, reservoir operation, routine maintenance of infrastructure, and preparedness for hydro-meteorological extremes. In recent years, improvements have been made in seasonal forecasting skill. However, without translation of these state-of-the-art forecast products into direct, actionable information, little ‘real’ progress can be made.

Rebecca Emberton (University of Reading) is pictured discussing global scale seasonal hydrometeorological forecasting with the Global Flood Awareness System at a national workshop on seasonal forecasting.

Event debrief: 9th International Corpus Linguistics conference

Carmen Dayrell from the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS), Lancaster University, has presented her work with Helen Baker and Tony McEnery on a diachronic analysis of newspaper articles about drought and water scarcity at the 9th International Corpus Linguistics conference (CL2017). Corpus linguistics is a methodology for the systematic analysis of large amounts of empirical data to study language. The CL2017 was hosted by the University of Birmingham, from 24-28 July 2017.

Carmen Dayrell of Lancaster University, image copyright Mathew Gillings @mathewgillings
Carmen Dayrell of Lancaster University, image copyright Mathew Gillings @mathewgillings

Entitled ‘Enriching our understanding of historic drought and water scarcity: investigating 200 years of news texts’, the paper discussed the media representation of drought and water scarcity throughout the United Kingdom, covering two hundred years of newspaper data, from 1800 to 2014.

The results showed that, throughout the entire period, drought events were portrayed as intense and prolonged, with negative impacts of across the country, especially England. But the analysis also unveils some interesting shifts in the discourse. While references to drought the 19th and most of the 20th centuries overwhelmingly related to lack of rain, the word drought started to be used increasingly more frequent as a metaphor towards the end of the 20th century. These mainly related to sporting achievements (e.g. goal, trophy or scoring droughts) and finance (credit, mortgage droughts).

Another clear shift relates to people’s concerns. In the 19th century, the newspapers frequently mentioned the impact of droughts on farming and agriculture. From the 1990s onwards, the focus seems to have shifted to constraints and limitations in people’s daily lives due to shortage or rationing of water, which in turn led to the introduction of hosepipe bans or the use of standpipes. Concern over the impact of droughts on plants and gardens has become one of the major topic in the contemporary broadsheet papers and tabloids.

UK-IWA Young Water Professionals Conference

16-18th April 2018
Location: Cranfield University
Event organiser: International Water Association (IWA)
Event type: Conference
Booking: Register online

Towards a Resilient Water Future

The UK-YWP is the best opportunity for young professionals working on the water to network, share skills, ideas and opportunities, and learn from each other. The Conference will have a mix of regular sessions, keynotes, PICO poster sessions, career fair, social and technical visits, and much more. Young Professionals from all sectors are welcome.

More information and online registration.