Flash floods and fires – that's 2030 Wales

icWales: Plagues of stinging jellyfish on our beaches, flash floods and wildfires in our hills and woodlands and clouds of bloodsucking insects at every turn. That is the nightmare climate change scenario which could be coming our way, decimating Wales’ tourist industry, according to VisitBritain.

Next month, the Wales Tourist Association’s conference in Swansea will examine the impact climate change will have on the Welsh tourism industry. Delegates are expected to hear that while blistering heat in Southern Europe will send tourists towards Wales’ cooler climate, a rise in temperatures here will be accompanied by many of the afflictions that already affect some of those areas.

…“Climate change is likely to lead to a ‘poleward shift’ in tourism activity as visitors shun locations closer to the tropics.

“However there is a down side, deterioration of coastal water quality with algae blooms and jellyfish a growing problem, wildfires during periods of drought destroying moor-land and heath-land habitats and flash floods at other times.

“What happens beyond the 2030s will depend on how governments, businesses and consumers respond to climate change in the coming years. “But as the weather forecaster John Ketley has noted in relation to the impact of climate change on Britain – ‘it won’t be all beer and skittles’.”

Yesterday Ashford Price, who runs Wales’ award-winning National Showcaves complex in the Upper Swansea Valley, said climate change was “already here”. He said, “The last 20 years have seen less and less water coming through the cave system and we have not had real snowfall for 20 years when in decades past it was thick with snow here in winter….We will never be able to influence the climate...if it is going to change it will. The challenge for us is to adapt to it.”…