Heavy rain across southern Britain meant that most rivers in England swelled at the beginning of 2024, prompting widespread flooding.
The River Trent was among the most severely affected. Water levels at the Drakelow gauging station in the west Midlands reached 3.88 metres on January 4 – well above the previous record set less than four years earlier in February 2020.
Are floods growing larger and happening more often in the UK? There are two ways to answer this question. One is to consult computer models which project Earth’s climate in the future, and the other is to search the historical record.
