1-2pm, Wed 29 January 2026, online
January’s webinar ‘Extreme weather on the edge of the world and Risky Cities’ brought together two Coast-R Network speakers, each sharing insights from current research on flood risk, coastal resilience, and extreme weather:
Professor Neil MacDonald (University of Liverpool; Coast-R Network) presented the Clandage project, “Extreme weather on the edge of the world: School logbooks and Hebridean life.”
Professor Briony McDonagh (University of Hull; Coast-R Network lead) presented the Risky Cities project, “A stitch in time: Creative approaches for conversations about flood risk and coastal resilience.”
The webinar was chaired by the Coast-R Network’s Prof Stuart McLelland. Stuart is Deputy Director of the Energy and Environment Institute at the University of Hull and Professor of Water Science, conducting research focused on the experimental modelling of rivers and coasts, and particularly understanding how climate change impacts on these environments.
View the Webinar Recording:
Professor Briony McDonagh
Briony will be speaking about will be speaking about the AHRC-funded Risky Cities Project, which focussed on learning from the past in areas vulnerable to weather events to build climate awareness and flood resilience today and for the future.
Risky Cities was a three-year research project (2020-2023) led by the University of Hull and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the UK Climate Resilience Programme.
Working in partnership with creative, community and water sector partners, Risky Cities explored how history, heritage and creative practice can support communities in responding to flooding and climate change. More specifically, the project examined how Kingston-Upon-Hull’s 800-year history of living with water and flooding could be combined with place-based arts interventions to build flood resilience and climate action.
Professor Neil MacDonald
We explore a weather history for Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, northwest Scotland. Using a combination of a new 164-year homogenous composite rainfall record representative of the settlement of Stornoway (1857-2020) alongside descriptive accounts of weather harvested from school logbooks from across the archipelago (1872-1945).
The school logbooks record the experiences of the communities, schools and school children throughout the seasons, demonstrating the value of an unusual and hitherto-underused archival source to the field of the historical geographies of weather and climate. The weather had numerous and varied impacts on life on the islands and was frequently recorded in the school logbooks. We show that islanders were especially vulnerable to extreme weather events – typically strong winds, heavy rain, storms and snow – which affected children’s school attendance, health and well-being.
In examining both instrumental and qualitative sources together analysis can examine not just weather (and climate), but also the impacts and responses of extreme weather on the communities of the Outer Hebrides and specifically Stornoway. The climate of the late nineteenth century in the Outer Hebrides was climatologically and meteorologically challenging, with harsh storms, severe cold, drought with notable societal impacts. The school logbooks enable us to examine societal responses to past climate variability, enabling a better understanding of how future climates may be adapted and responded too.
The results of this work are currently on display (digital exhibition) at the Tasglann nan Eilean (Archives), Stornoway.
