Impact Of Weather On Human Activity

Britain

Drought

• The weather and climate play a huge role in defining what human activities can and cannot occur.

• For instance farming types are directly influenced by the climate.

• Some of the more extreme weather conditions are shown below to describe how they might affect human activity.

Britain

• Britain doesn't tend experience extremes of weather too often. • Fog is common, and we usually have at least one bad flood each

year. • However, droughts and tropical storms (hurricanes) are much

more rare.• In the last 25 years Britain has experienced drought conditions in

the summer of 1976 and 1995. • Both caused great problems for local water supplies, after

months of below average rainfall caused the reservoirs to run out.

• Although these two summers were very hot, dry and caused problems they were nothing comparable to the extreme droughts recently experienced in Africa.

Britain

•The United Kingdom is not in the normal line of tropical storms or hurricanes either.

•In 1987 a hurricane hit southern England causing millions of pounds worth of damage, but this was a freak occurrence rather than something we should expect every year.

Drought

• Droughts are times when there has been below average rainfall for a period of time, causing water supplies to dry up and run out.

• In countries such as the United Kingdom and America they cause inconveniences for the local people.

• Farmers probably will be affected and water supplies might be more tightly controlled, but in general the country will cope pretty well.

• During the mid 1990's California suffered a 3-year drought, and yet life continued almost as normal.

Drought• However in some less developed countries the threat of drought is a

very dangerous one that could result in millions of people starving to death.

• People in places such as Ethiopia and Sudan rely on the rains for their crops.

• Most of them are subsistence farmers, which means that they grow enough for themselves, and maybe a little to sell.

• If the rains fail they are left with no food and no means to buy any. • Equally Africa is a very hot and dry continent, so drinking water is

always very valuable. • No rains mean that quickly people run out of water. • Serious droughts have affected areas of Africa for the past 30 years,

killing millions of people.

Fog

• Fog can cause great problems when it occurs in the United Kingdom, Anyone who has been in a car on the motorway in fog will appreciate this fact.

• Accidents are frequently caused by people driving too fast in patches of thick fog where the poor visibility means that they cannot really see the cars in front.

• Other methods of transport such as ships and planes are also badly affected by the poor visibility associated with fog.