New paper published by University of Edinburgh team demonstrates another impact of climate change: extreme rain conditions increase the risk of derailments
Five years ago, heavy rain caused a landslip near Carmont in Scotland which led to the derailment of a passenger train on its way to Aberdeen. Three people died, including the driver and conductor, and more were injured.
Photo by Johnny Ho / Unsplash
A number of investigations have followed this tragic incident, not least the case that say Network Rail fined £6.7m for health and safety failures. The hope, of course, is to ensure that such derailments don’t happen again.
That means a new paper from a team at the University of Edinburgh makes depressing reading. They suggest that intense rainfall of the kind that caused the accident at Carmont are between 15% and 20% more like due to the warming climate.
It has been established in previous studies that our planet’s atmosphere and oceans are currently between 1 and 1.5 degrees warmer compared to conditions in the late nineteenth century. The new study suggests that if global temperatures increase by more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the likelihood increases by between 30% and 40%.
A warmer atmosphere holds more water, which means more extreme, heavier downpours. That means more flash floods – including in urban areas – and more damage to infrastructure.
The team used data from weather radars and climate models to calculate how global warming changed the intensity, frequency and distribution of rainfall at and near Carmont.
They show that on the morning of August 8, 2020 – the day of the fateful accident – a surge of rainfall lasting some four hours came down close to the crash site, with another severe downpour an hour prior to the derailment.
This caused gravel to wash on to the tracks while an improperly constructed drain could not manage the sizeable volume of water. Operational procedures also contributed to the accident, which was why Network Rail was fined £6.7m in 2023.
The paper, ‘Attribution of extreme precipitation related to a fatal derailment near Carmont, Scotland’ is published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, and is the work of climate scientists from the university’s School of GeoSciences and School of Physics and Astronomy, working in partnership with the Met Office. It was funded by the University of Edinburgh and the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme, itself funded by the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
Professor Simon Tett, Chair in Earth System Dynamics, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh and lead author of the paper, says: ‘Climate change is not only increasing the risk of heatwaves but also extreme rainfall. Scotland would be wise to prepare for heavier summer deluges as the climate continues to warm.’
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