im scared.
More storms - then comes Hurricane Danielle
Just when you thought the weather couldn't get worse or wetter, forecasters have warned Britain to brace itself for even more of a battering.
The Met Office expects torrential rain to start sweeping the country this afternoon. In some areas, almost a month's average rain will fall in a day.
The new storms have raised fears that global warming is already beginning to have a profound effect on our weather.
The Met Office says there is danger of more flooding and landslides today and tomorrow. Then, as the nation starts to recover, the forecasters say the tail end of Hurricane Danielle, now sweeping across the Atlantic, will strike later in the week.
Extreme events, such as last week's, will occur more often, say meteorologists, and the cost of life insurance is expected to soar as storms, droughts and floods become more frequent and more lethal.
The Association of British Insurers admitted last night it was looking at UK life expectancy in the wake of last year's European heat wave.
The association's climate expert, Malcolm Tarling, said: 'France's heat wave killed more than 27,000 people and that could happen here. We have started to look at the potential for health.'
Warmer summers could lead to greater life expectancy by encouraging outdoor activities, but raised risks of skin cancerand heat waves would offset this effect.
In any case, it is the risk of freak weather patterns that most concerns the industry.
Those affected by this month's dramatic weather included drivers of 57 vehicles caught in landslides in Lochearnhead in central Scotland and more than 80 people who had to be rescued from Boscastle in Cornwall after a 10ft wall of water smashed into the village.
'The trouble is that we know global warming is going to produce more and more extreme weather events,' said Professor Alan Thorpe, director of the Natural Environment Research Council's centres for atmos pheric science.
'However, we don't yet have the computing power to predict exactly where and when these events will take place. We need massive machines for that.'
The solution, he said, was for Britain to collaborate with the rest of Europe, as it has done with space research, and set up a European climate computer centre to predict more accurately how droughts, floods and storms will strike.
Other scientists have also warned that Britain could be sued for billions of pounds by countries suffering climate change effects, the result - they say - of Britain pumping millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past 200 years.
Professor John Schellnhuber, of Oxford's Tyndall centre, said lawyers in South America were already looking at the possibility of suing industrialised countries for 'direct liability' over climate change. 'This will happen,' he said.
'People still think of the effects of climate change in 20 years' time, but that is not the case. It is happening now.'
Estimates by the Tyndall centre to be shown to European scientists this week reveal that just one extreme weather event - for example, a particularly ferocious storm - could cost more than £15 billion in damages in future.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1288371,00.html
this is scary.