Why Won't It Stop Raining? The Case for Global Wetting AND Global Warming

In this timely and practical solo episode of Straight Talking Sustainability, host Emma Burlow challenges decades of climate communication focused on warming, heat, and melting ice caps by asking a provocative question: should we be talking more about global wetting, given that people find it incredibly easy to talk about weather (especially rain) but remarkably difficult to discuss sustainability or climate change?

Inspired by Professor Ed Hawkins' legendary climate visuals from the University of Reading (creator of the warming stripes), Emma demonstrates how shifting conversations from abstract global temperature averages to tangible rainfall increases, flooding disruption, and extreme weather costs creates immediate relevance for businesses, cuts through resistance, and opens doors for people who would never engage with traditional warming narratives.

Emma opens with a delightful icebreaker from Dr Matt Sawyer's Lighthouse carpentry project session: "what colour is the sky where you are?"

This simple weather question highlights how naturally we discuss meteorological conditions in the UK (will it ever stop raining becoming a constant refrain), yet struggle to connect these everyday observations to sustainability conversations.

The gap between acceptable, easy weather talk that trips off the tongue and awkward, sometimes political climate discussions represents a massive missed opportunity for engagement.

The episode introduces Ed Hawkins' climate visuals website (ed-hawkings.github.io) featuring not just the famous warming stripes but remarkable visualisations including 400 years of cherry blossom dates in Japan (showing progressively earlier blooming as temperatures rise), demonstrating that climate impacts extend far beyond heat to encompass timing, seasons, and precipitation patterns.

Emma argues that whilst warming, greenhouse effects, hot house earth terminology, net zero, and carbon reduction all link fundamentally to heat (alongside melting ice caps and sea level rise), these concepts remain hard to grasp on a day-to-day basis because they are incremental and abstract.

Global average temperature increases may mean colder conditions locally, or changes so gradual people genuinely have not noticed much warming, creating the persistent "so much for global warming" reaction when it is pouring rain.

This confusion reveals that common knowledge about why it is getting wetter simply does not exist, representing a critical communication gap that sustainability professionals can address.

The Science of Global Wetting Explained Simply:

Emma returns to basic chemistry and physics (acknowledging it has been a long time since most people engaged with these subjects) to explain the warming-to-wetting mechanism. Emissions rising from fossil fuel burning, deforestation, and other human activities cause carbon dioxide buildup trapping heat, slowly turning up Earth's thermostat.

Temperature rises create hundreds of impacts beyond the commonly-discussed melting ice, sea level rise, heatwaves, and wildfires. Climate responds to temperature increases through multiple mechanisms: warmer oceans store heat causing water expansion (raising sea levels, which blew Emma's mind), Arctic sea ice melt makes oceans darker so they absorb more heat (the albedo effect, another mind-blowing revelation), and crucially, for every degree the atmosphere warms it can hold approximately 7% more water, becoming more humid.

This represents the golden takeaway statistic: at roughly 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the atmosphere holds significantly more water. For regions in rain shadows like the UK (where Atlantic weather systems deliver precipitation), this means substantially more rain because the atmosphere carries more moisture.

The impacts become immediately tangible: heavier rain, stronger storms, more dangerous extreme weather, landslides, mudslides, loss of roads and railways from coastal erosion, and flooding that people can genuinely feel rather than abstractly understand.

UK and US Rainfall Statistics Demonstrating the Pattern:

Emma provides striking UK data showing the trend is undeniable. January 2026 saw 117% of normal rainfall nationally, whilst Northern Ireland experienced an incredible 170% of January rainfall (one of the wettest Januarys ever recorded).

September 2025 brought England nearly 150% of normal rainfall, with some regions experiencing extreme outliers over 200% of average precipitation. Most remarkably, 2023 was the wettest year ever recorded in UK history.

These are not small shifts; they represent significant structural changes in climate patterns that accumulate year after year, creating the trends and patterns that define climate change.

The US shows regional variation (some areas getting drier, others wetter, particularly the Midwest and Northeast), but critically, rainfall is shifting towards short intense bursts causing flash floods rather than steady precipitation, exemplifying what Emma calls frequency (more of it) and intensity (the really destructive characteristic).

Intensity matters most because annoying drizzly rain causes minimal problems, but concentrated downpours create catastrophic disruption.

Why This Reframing Works for Business Engagement:

Emma describes asking workplace teams an open question: "What should we be more worried about as a business - the heat or extreme weather and flooding?" This question brings people to the table who would never engage with traditional warming discussions, because everyone has flooding and extreme weather experiences (drains collapsing, flash floods, houses undermined, motorway delays, factories at risk, staff unable to reach work).

A hospice client identified flooding as a massive operational issue affecting medicine delivery, supply chains, and ambulance access. These stories punch through far more easily than abstract warming concepts.

Conversely, when Emma asks about heat, only about one-third of people have relevant experience (working from home with fans, minor annoyance unless they are severely stressed, involved with outdoor workers, or supporting vulnerable populations).

Heat can be chronic and relentless (Emma trained teams from Cyprus and Greece in September 2025 who were drained and cynical after weeks of high 30s to low 40s temperatures, asking "why is no one coming to help us?"), and heatwaves are now five to ten times more common than 50 years ago, creating deadly conditions for vulnerable people and outdoor workers.

However, extreme rainfall and storms represent acute shocks: sudden, really destructive, hugely expensive events involving people movement, resource deployment, rescue operations, building closures, and transport shutdowns.

This disruption carries massive costs, and whilst it hits the most vulnerable hardest, in business contexts cost always matters. Starting conversations about risk using frequency and intensity frameworks (how much does a one-off event cost, how do we model for it becoming more frequent and intense) opens eyes rapidly: 100,000 pounds every 10 years may not be problematic, but 100,000 pounds every two years or 200,000 pounds annually becomes untenable when temperatures will continue rising through the century with no turnaround.

The Double Whammy and Agricultural Impacts:

When heat and wet interact, agricultural businesses face double whammies: summer heatwaves causing business disruption, winter flooding and extreme weather compounding problems.

Putting costs to these combined impacts promises that "eyes and ears will open," and Emma notes she has deliberately avoided using the word sustainability and barely mentioned carbon throughout this conversation, demonstrating how relatable this framing becomes.

Four Cut-Through Messages for Workplace Conversations:

Emma provides practical messaging that avoids sustainability jargon whilst creating engagement:

1. Climate change is changing the risk landscape (insurers and finance industry already know this; look at insurance documents for proof)
2. It's not just about getting warmer; it's about getting wetter in lots of parts of the world (making it relatable when people see pouring rain daily)
3. Planning now requires addressing both chronic and acute shocks (heat is often chronic, extreme weather is acute shock, really messing with resilience; this alone generates hour-long conversations)
4. Use Ed Hawkins' visual diagrams showing clear causal relationships between carbon dioxide, temperature change, humidity, and rainfall (couldn't be easier to understand)

Emma challenges listeners to craft their own cut-through messages, keeping them simple and open, avoiding expectations beyond establishing that warming is happening alongside wetting, questioning what this costs businesses, what risks it creates, and how it affects operations looking forward five to ten years.

The richness of this conversation topic creates natural engagement without forcing sustainability frameworks onto reluctant audiences.

In this climate communication and business risk episode, you'll discover:

1. Why the atmosphere holds 7% more water for every degree of warming (the golden statistic)