We’re all keenly aware of the heat wave that is affecting the UK and beyond – but why might it be happening? Len Shaffrey, University of Reading Professor of Climate Science, explains all in a new post for The Conversation.
Image credit: the Met Office
The UK and Ireland have been experiencing a prolonged hot and dry spell since June, with the first half of summer being the UK’s driest on record. The lack of rainfall has led to hosepipe bans in Northern Ireland and the north-west of England, while the weather is also playing havoc with farming. A shortage of lettuce and broccoli is expected in the next few months, and grass isn’t growing fast enough to feed Ireland’s sheep and cattle through the winter.
The hot and dry weather is associated with a high pressure weather system situated over the UK. The high pressure means that the storms the UK occasionally gets at this time of year are being steered much further northwards towards Iceland. While the UK and Ireland have been wilting in the sunshine, Reykjavík has recorded its wettest (May) and cloudiest (June) months on record.
Earlier this month a group of Reading soil scientists took their research to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition to tell the public all about the importance of soil. Jeremy Lelean from the Soil Security Programme tells us how it went.
The SSP is funded by UK Research and Innovation and comprises 15 research projects across a range of UK institutions, including the University of Reading. It exists to better understand how soil resists, recovers and adapts to land use and climate change. But at the heart of the programme is making sure that this research gets heard about in a useful and accessible way. This can mean interacting with policy makers, land owners or commercial partners or, in this case, reaching out to members of the public.
Harry Barratt (Rothamsted Research), Alice Dibley (UoR), Soon Gweon (UoR), Simon De-Ville (Loughborough University) and Harriet Robson (UoR)
We’d been preparing for the exhibition since last November, and all the hard work from SSP scientists and university staff from events, the research communications and impact teams and the press office culminated in us presenting our exhibit at the Royal Society in London from 2 to 8 July.
‘Soil: Our Buried Treasure’ showed both soil’s importance – but also how it is overlooked. We explained the function of soil in context by comparing the contribution of soil structure, life and nutrients combine to make soil the living breathing system we need it to be.
Visitors were able to get hands on in making a rain storm and seeing its effect with our concrete capping display, get up close and personal with soil wildlife in our Soil Safari and learn about pH and how it affects plant growth with our famous Soil Security Hydrangeas.
As well as this we commissioned this video by poet Anthony Anaxagorou to help spread the word about soil:
Excellently, Anthony was able to make it to the first morning of the exhibition and give a live performance of the poem to the assembled press and other visitors. This must have left an impression because John Hammond from the School of Agriculture and Development, seen below engaging a younger visitor with the Soil Safari, was invited to appear on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today. If you didn’t hear John live you can catch up here.
In the interview, John explains the cutting-edge research he’s been doing at the University into how plants can access phosphorous in the soil. Incredibly, 90% of the phosphorus applied to our fields isn’t used by plants because it ‘sticks to’ the soil. John has been improving this by selecting oil seed rape plant strains which attract beneficial bacteria to their roots which can make phosphorous available to plants. He hopes that this research can be applied to other cropping plants such as wheat and barley.
An important part of the exhibition was the two evening soirees attended by principal investigators from the Soil Security Programme who were able to meet scientists, government and industry partners in a more informal atmosphere. This led to many making connections they otherwise wouldn’t have. And, as part of our commitment to developing younger researchers it was particularly good to have Soil Security Fellow Jackie Stroud at one of the functions.
Dr. Jackie Stroud (Rothamsted Research), Professor Chris Collins (UoR), Prof Jonathan Leake (Sheffield University) and Prof Richard Bardgett (University of Manchester).
It’s worth mentioning that of the nearly 50 volunteers who took part, 39 were post-doctoral researchers or PhD students. This is a vital learning experience for them to acquire the essential skills needed as they move forward in their careers. Soon Gweon of the University’s School of Biological Sciences also lent us his microbiological expertise and Soil Security Fellow Nicholle Bell was there to spread the word on how important soil is to concrete capping and erosion.
The primary aim of us being at the exhibition was to engage with the public and share research stories with those who, perhaps, weren’t as engaged with soil as we’d like – and to this end, our superb team of volunteers managed to have 2,500 positive engagements throughout the week. All went away with our map of how to discover the buried treasure within soil for themselves.
Jeremy Lelean is Web and Communications Officer for the Soil Security Programme, which is a UKRI-funded programme with fifteen projects spanning seventeen UK research institutions. Its aim is to fundamentally understand how soil functions and how it adapts to land use and climate change. A key part of the programme is deliver this evidence base at a scale that is useful to both policy and commercial decision makers. For more information, visit: www.soilsecurity.org
The Reading Soil Security team would like to thank: Hannah Millway, from the University Design and Print Studio, and Kate McNaboe, from the events team, for their help in designing and producing the exhibit; Pete Castle in research communications and Katie Cooper in impact team for the help in developing the video; Pete Bryant in the Press Office for arranging John Hammond’s Farming Today interview; and the 50 volunteers who took part.
The University of Reading weather records, captured at the Atmospheric Observatory, are updated daily and are publicly available online. Temperatures and rain records go back to 1908, while the sunshine records start in 1956. Dr Rob Thompson in the Department of Meteorology has crunched the numbers to give his perspective on the current heatwave.
32 The 32-day period with no rain recorded at the University of Reading weather station this summer was the fifth longest on our record. This run, between 18 June and 19 July inclusive, ended when 0.5mm of rain fell on Friday 20 July. The outright Reading record for days with no rain observed is 37 days, which has occurred twice, in summer 1976 and summer into autumn 1959.
6.5 The tiny amount of rain that fell last week is nowhere near enough to help our gardens and the wider countryside, though. So what if we allow a little rain in a day and keep counting? The last recorded rain before Friday was on 17 June, when just 0.2mm fell, while 0.3mm fell the day before that. There was also 0.3mm on 9 June, 1mm on 7 June and 4.6mm on 3 June. This gives a June total of 6.5mm, making it the driest month since April 2011, and the driest June since 1962.
We throw away or destroy millions of unused medicines each year, at an estimated cost of £300m to the NHS. But could they be safely re-used? Reading’s Dr Parastou Donyai has gathered the views of patients and says it’s time for a public debate.
90 years ago this week, Nancy Astor, the first female British MP to take her seat, held a garden party at Cliveden House to celebrate the passing of the Act of Parliament that granted equal voting rights for men and women. Rachel Newton has been delving into the University’s Astor archive and tells us what she’s discovered.
This summer, I have a research internship working with Dr Jacqui Turner on the undergraduate research opportunities programme (UROP) within the Department of History and in collaboration with Special Collections here at the University of Reading.
We are preparing a digital exhibition curating archive material to tell the story of the political career and legacy of Nancy Astor, the first sitting female MP in Britain. While I was researching, I came across some fascinating documents relating to a garden party that Astor held at her riverside country home, Cliveden House, almost exactly 90 years ago.
If it had not been for the discoveries of Arvid Carlsson we would have no drugs for Parkinson’s disease. In a recent post for The Conversation, Reading neuroscientist Dr Patrick Lewis explores the legacy of the scientist who discovered a critical molecule that brain cells use to communicate.
Arvid Carlsson, the Swedish neuroscientist and Nobel laureate, died on June 29, 2018 at the age of 95. He had devoted his life to understanding how the brain works and was awarded the Nobel for his research into dopamine – an important chemical found in the brain.
So what is dopamine, and why did finding out about it merit the Nobel Prize?
The Environment Agency is consulting on a new flood alleviation scheme for Reading, to be sited on the banks of the River Thames in Caversham, and they’re inviting local residents to look at the proposals online and give feedback. Reading environmental scientist and Caversham resident Dr Liz Stephens gives her thoughts on the scheme.
There are plenty of photographs of the 1947 flood in Reading, including this one taken from a plane. Credit: The County Borough of Reading, via Bob Jones
Caversham may have been fortunate to miss out on the worst of the flooding along the Thames in recent memory, but the scale of the flooding experienced in 1947 shows that many people in lower Caversham may unknowingly live in areas at high risk of flooding.
The extraordinary level of the 1947 flood is marked on a pole by Reading Bridge/Whittington’s Tea Barge, which is visible from the Thames Path. It wasn’t a one-off either, as photographs in Reading Museum point to significant flooding in 1894.
Anxious about the fate of your dahlias and tomatoes in the warm weather? Dr Alastair Culham from the School of Biological Sciences explains the best time of day to water your garden in a new post for The Conversation.
Evidence against a death row inmate in Japan is shaky, but retrial is unlikely because it would damage the Japanese criminal justice system’s image of infallibility and provide an opportunity for abolitionists, says Dr Mai Sato in a new piece for The Conversation.
Professor Rosa Freedman says bias towards Israel played a part in the US leaving the UN Human Rights Council. She examines the likely fall-out in a recent post for The Conversation.
The US’s announcement that it is leaving the UN Human Rights Council should not surprise anyone, since the Trump administration has long made clear its disdain for many parts of the United Nations. But the damage that the decision is likely to cause could nonetheless topple an increasingly wobbly house of cards.
