Abstract
A STATEMENT has been issued by the Undersecretary of State for Air relating to the recent shortage of rainfall over the British Isles and its effect upon the country's water-supply. In it attention is directed to warnings given by water engineers that over much of England there is likely to be a shortage of water during the next few months, and this followed by some statistics of recent rainfall, and some notes on the meteorological aspects of the situation. It is pointed out that the threat of shortage of supply is greatest for south-east England, where reliance is placed mainly on deep-seated water supply ; that deep water sources there are dependent for replenishment upon winter rainfall being at least up to the average. Much of the summer fall is lost by evaporation or taken up by vegetation, so that little or none percolates to great depths ; moreover, most of south-east England had less than 70 per cent of its average, rainfall during the period October 1948 to March 1949. The winter was not only dry, but also very mild. After the eight winters in the last fifty years that have been both mild and dry, the succeeding spring and summer were dry as often as they were wet, therefore no expectation of a return to normal conditions can be based on the character of the past winter. Another discouraging feature is that the deficiency of rainfall is equally well marked over a large part of Europe. The immediate cause of the deficiency is the abnormal frequency and persistence of anticyclones over the area affected, combined with a displacement northwards of the tracks of the eastward-moving depressions with their attendant rain ; but in the absence of any clue to the cause of these abnormal features of the general circulation of the atmosphere, their duration cannot be predicted.
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Water-Supply and Rainfall over the British Isles. Nature 164, 96–97 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164096e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164096e0