Yorkshire forecaster Paul Hudson on climate change deniers, extreme weather and cutting carbon

"But I’ve detected, certainly over the last 12 months, that it’s almost like a light switch has gone on. I get very little stick now on social media from climate change deniers...

"These horrendous weather extremes that we have seen both locally and internationally have, I think, made people realise that the climate is changing and they can see and feel it themselves...People are now being affected and I think that’s made a massive difference. The climate sceptic brigade now seem few and far between.”

The extremes he talks of have been seen close to home and across the globe. A new UK record-high temperature of 40.3°C was set at Coningsby, Lincolnshire in July this year and half of the top ten hottest days on record in the country have now occurred from 2015 onwards.

"If we break a temperature record it’s usually by a tenth or two tenths of a degree,” Paul says. “To get Coningsby breaking its own record by five and a half degrees this year is something that we’ve never seen before.”

Paul has presented the weather on BBC Look North for 25 years and became the broadcaster’s first ever climate correspondent in 2008, reporting on the impacts of climate change. We are running out of time, he says, to meet aspirations to keep global warming at or below 1.5°C by 2050.

Paul, who is the host of The Yorkshire Post Climate Change Summit 2022 event next month, says: "It’s pretty alarming that the climate is where it is now, bearing in mind that we’re still expecting, even if we can keep temperatures below the 1.5 degrees threshold - which looks implausible really - that global temperatures are going to rise from where they are now.

"We’ve already got additional climate change baked into the atmosphere, even if we get carbon emissions under control and it’s an extremely worrying time.”

He adds: “If we are to stop temperatures rising above 1.5 degrees then not only do we have to be carbon net zero but after 2050 we actually have to go carbon negative and somehow take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

"And looking at the trajectory for cutting carbon, we are nowhere near at this moment in time in being able to bring carbon emissions under control.”

The impact of global warming is a more unstable atmosphere and more extremes, Paul explains - heat, drought, excess rainfall and flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires.

“The heat extremes that we’ve just lived through in the UK are just one element….The heat India and Pakistan had in Spring broke many records for pre-monsoonal heat and from Pakistan’s point of view, that translated into record breaking rainfall, where a third of the country has been completely overwhelmed by floodwater.

"The Western Mediterranean [sea] temperatures this summer have been nearly five degrees above average, making the temperature the same as the Caribbean sea.

"Where you get warmer seas, that will lead to bigger thunderstorms or stronger hurricanes as a hurricane once developed draws its energy from the warmth of the sea. All across the planet we’re facing and seeing extremes.”

There’s much work to be done in addressing the climate crisis we’re faced with. On a national level, it’s about increasing renewable energy sources, decarbonising the economy and better insulating homes, Paul says.

Individuals can take steps such as using cars less, turning down thermostats, cutting back on foreign holidays and eating less red meat. But expense is a huge challenge.

Paul says: “Hydrogen is a bit of a holy grail because you can have hydrogen buses and that type of thing. And one of the beauties of hydrogen is that its by-product is water. But it’s expensive to generate.”

“It’s alright saying let’s go out and buy an electric car and charge it with green renewable electricity at night,” Paul adds, “but not everybody can afford that sort of money…

"We can do things ourselves, walking a bit more, using the car less, using public transport more but actually the big decisions have to come from government and one of the biggest of all is decarbonising power generation.”

Keighley-born Paul has had an obsession for all things meteorological from a young age. “I was very young and my mum said I saw a thunderstorm over Haworth moor and I became obsessed with the weather.

"I’ve always been obsessed with the outdoors and when I was seven I got a weather station in the back garden and started recording the weather. I did that everyday for ten years.”

Work experience at Leeds Weather Centre followed and Paul, who lives in Leeds, has now been a forecaster for 30 years, beginning his career at the Met Office after completing a degree in geophysics at Newcastle University.

He was taught during that time, in the early 1990s, about global warming and climate change. “It’s nothing new, it’s just nobody took it seriously,” he says. “It’s taken years for governments around the world to start taking it seriously.

"But the acceleration and extremes that have gone on certainly over the past few years has been extraordinary.”

The Yorkshire Post will again partner with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission for the climate summit at The Royal Armouries in Leeds on November 15. Visit yorkshireclimatechange.co.uk