How is extreme weather taught in schools?
The summer of 2022 saw an unprecedented series of heatwaves in the UK, with temperatures reaching 40.3°C on 19 July, a national record temperature which led to the declaration of a national emergency.
On 19 July, I, as a sixth-form student, was in the middle of my Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award expedition in Brecon Beacons, Wales — a week-long trip involving camping and hiking for some eight hours each day. In conversations since this period I have told people I was ‘lucky’ to avoid the 40°C heat some of my friends were experiencing in London, where I live; instead I was hit with only 34°C. To give a picture of the severity of this heatwave to my expedition teammates and I: each day we would start at 3:30am to avoid the heat of the day and on one day we were even driven to our destination as a precaution. Although the effects of the heatwave on this expedition were relatively short-term, impacting just the events of a week rather than my health, wellbeing or ability to fund my basic needs, this was not the case for its impact on many people.
Although the expedition was a challenging experience as it would be for anyone, I am fortunate enough not to have been greatly impacted by the extreme weather to the detriment of my long-term health and lifestyle. But only on a direct level — as an effect of global warming, extreme weather has impacted the globe and therefore everyone, deeply if not directly. But when asked to talk about my experience of extreme weather, the next thing which came to mind was the level of information I have been presented with, which should provide me an understanding of its impacts, on me or on the whole planet, to enable me and people of my age (if not everyone) to be aware of the direction and significance of this extreme weather to our present and our future, and to have the tools to deal with this direction.
I am a Year 13 A-Level student studying Geography, Politics and Art. As one would expect, studying Geography has given me the most breadth of insight on extreme weather issues. The area of study which hones in on extreme weather is covered in the hydrological cycle module of my course, which looks at the causes, human contributions and impacts of droughts and flooding. It is fair to say that I could outline a summary and a handful of details on the course to someone in conversation, and give some examples from the past couple of decades — ‘did you know that in 2020, there were 1.25 million acres of land devoted to almond farming in California, which led to over-abstraction of water?!’ Memorising the examples and statistics of the latest extreme weather events by heart can write me an A* essay, but it leaves me wondering the extent of application this exam-filtered knowledge will leave me with.
Statistics like the one above vary in terms of their educational value — used correctly they can be relatable and meaningful, providing a visualisation of what they describe. For example, forests act as carbon sinks replacing greenhouse gases with oxygen, helping to stabilise gases in the climate — they are therefore intrinsic to our existence in an ever-polluting society, not to mention the habitats they provide. A statistic to implicate the degradation of forests, found by a study by the Guardian in 2019, is that ’26 million hectares of forest is lost each year’. This statistic sounds like a large amount, though it is difficult for most people to visualise the real quantity of 26 million hectares. This fact can be rephrased to: ‘an area of forest the size of the UK is lost each year’ — now, the fact is visualisable, and will invite readers to picture the quantity and therefore understand the extent of the loss. Although this is not entirely a part of the teaching methodology in schools, I have found this to be significant to my perception of information in school. Extreme weather is a subject abundant with quantitative information, so details like this can be crucial to understanding.
Learning about extreme weather in school while simultaneously experiencing its effects has made me question the distribution of information around the issue. It is easy for me to gain a foundational knowledge of extreme weather in my A level Geography studies, but my friends studying in contrasting fields don’t have so strong a foundation. Yes, many of us scour the news for facts and insight, though it’s so easily warped through political motives of news distributors, not to mention that many people are not exposed to the underlying notion of using the news or their own research to become informed on a topic. Furthermore, with a cold winter on the rise and energy costs soaring, information about extreme weather and how to deal with it could not be more important. Is the news enough education to protect the health of many this winter? Are me and other children being provided with a substantial gauge on mitigating and managing this extreme weather? The warming climate means extreme and versatile conditions are on the rise, and so is our need to prepare.
