THE number of severe flood warnings issued in Scotland has increased more than five-fold in the past year.
So far, 75 severe flood warnings have been issued by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), for 2008, compared with just 13 throughout the whole of 2007.
Environmental groups have said it is further evidence of climate change, and hav
e warned that worse is yet to come.
Mike Donaghy, freshwater policy officer at WWF Scotland, said the increase in the number of floods ties in with climate change predictions.
"We will get more summer events and they will be these more intensive rainfall events," he said. "The predictions are that floods will increase."
He said when heavy rain falls in built-up areas, the drains cannot cope, leading to flooded homes.
"The combination of high-density housing and high-intensity rainfall means people are at high risk now," he added.
David Faichney, flood units manager for Sepa, agreed that climate change will lead to increased flooding over the long term, but said it was not yet clear whether that was the reason for individual weather "events".
"We find it very difficult to make the link between climate predictions and the weather on a day-to-day basis," he said.
"What is absolutely clear is that global warming is taking place and that increase in temperature increases the energy in the atmosphere, and that's what brings these really torrential downpours."
He said the statistics must be approached with caution because severe flood warnings are updated every six hours, and a few days of floods can result in a large number of warnings.
Several days of bad floods in the south-east of Scotland in January were behind 61 of the 75 severe weather warnings.
The statistics, released in Sepa's annual report, came as WWF Scotland said Met Office figures showed August had the least sunshine since 1978, and was the 10th wettest on record.
Dr Sam Gardner, climate policy officer, said: "August was a month of real climate chaos, with floods and landslides causing major disruption to transport systems and damage to people's homes across Scotland."
The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Bill will be introduced in the next month, with the aim of making the process for protecting at-risk areas quicker and simpler.
Mike Russell, the environment minister, said: "We are acutely aware that an increased risk of flooding is one of the ways in which climate change could affect Scotland, which is why we are updating legislation."
Sepa's annual report also showed the organisation had met 18 out of 23 key targets.
There has been a ten-fold rise in recycling and composting rates over the past decade and 1.39 million tonnes of biodegradable waste were sent to landfill in 2007, compared to 1.9 million in 1999.
However, there were failures of bathing-water quality standards in the summer of 2007, which have been largely blamed on flooding. And greenhouse gas emissions were higher than in 2005, being attributed to coal-fired power stations.
'Every time we hear rain we worry'THERE has been flooding in Freuchie before – but nothing on the scale of the devastation wrought by the rains of 13 August this year.
The Fife village only contains about 500 households, and 20 of those were filled by the rising water. A further 22 gardens were destroyed, and numerous cars were written off in their streetside parking spaces.
Almost a month on, evacuated residents have yet to return to homes where plasterboard and flooring have been ripped up. It is understood a number of locals were not insured.
Ewen Jardine, the secretary of the community council, told The Scotsman the incident had been "disastrous" for the village.
"People are devastated by what happened," he said. "Every time you hear the rain fall you start to think it is going to flood again. For everyone, it is a really harrowing time. We have had a fair bit of flooding in the past – a few houses have been hit and for those people it's really hard – but nothing on the scale that we had on 13 August."
A resident measured the rainfall – which landed on already saturated ground – at 49.5mm.
Meteorologists said at the time that almost half a month's rain fell in one night.
Mr Jardine hopes Fife Council will now take action.
He said: "Perhaps it could be a lesson, with hindsight. Hopefully, the council will now do something like inspecting our burns more often and doing a risk assessment on all the burns in Freuchie."
