Hope no one’s caught up in the wildfires that seemed to be everywhere in Europe and North America.
Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something?
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…been telling us for years/decades.
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Four compelling charts from this year.
What amazes me is that we are actually seeing multiple extreme weather events over such an apparently short timescale in recent years. I don’t think any of the climate science even twenty years ago predicted we might have this. It doesn’t feel like these are just ‘blips’ any more. Scary. We now have predictable unpredictability.
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We have a very wet July here in the Cambridgeshire fens.
A lot of Wheat was planted in the fields around this year and it’s all soaked and flattened. My farmer friends around us are all very unhappy with this weather and are vey worried about the state of the crop…
If it doesn’t dry up soon they’ll struggle to get it harvested🤷🏻♂️
Similar story here in Kent, out and about on Saturday afternoon it was wet and the car thermometer reading was 13.5C, in July in the middle of the afternoon! (and for those across the pond that’s 56F)
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Cold, grey and wet in the non Fen bits of Cambridgeshire too!
Noisy too. The RAF and USAF seem to have been given a few extra petrol tokens to play with over the last couple of days…
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Northern Europe is fine but the situation is really bad in some of the the areas around Mediterranean.
Agree. We are also largely to blame from a consumerist viewpoint. Are these maps and statistics and charts on the average persons mind when they drive to the shops down the road… or even leave their hifi on 24/7 365.
This occurs every summer on Whidby Island when the pilots in the reserve units show up for their mandatory two weeks of duty and they have them fly endless circles with their touch and go’s. NAS Whidbey Island is the premier naval aviation installation in the Pacific Northwest and home of all Navy tactical electronic attack squadrons flying the EA-18G Growler. Adding to the depth and capability of the air station are eight Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance squadrons flying the P-3 Orion, P-8 Poseidon and EP-3E Aries. The base also is home to three US Navy reserve squadrons.
That’s just what The Romans said. Never the same after the death of Crassus.
We get lots of pairs of Typhoons and F15s chasing their tails overhead, full afterburners. Quite the sight on a blue sky day, irritating when it’s cloudy.
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Yeah, you’re not kidding.
They must have got their Tesco ClubCard Vouchers. Bloody noisy sods have been buzzing over us for weeks now!!
Willy.
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I go past Coningsby semi regularly. Never seen it so busy. Lakenheath the same, though they seem to fly more frequently anyway.
Either way, not helping the fight vs. climate change. Mind, I guess the sh*t being chucked about in Ukraine, which is likely why they’re on their toes a bit more just now, dwarfs that somewhat…
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RAF Marham is just down the road from us and the Typhoons are making a proper nuisance of themselves lately. However, the low flying support aircraft are almost worse.
We have had Chinooks and Ospreys flying over so low that you can almost read the names off there uniform badges…
Thanks for sharing these BruceW - whilst UK seems to have fallen into a cool damp patch, the bigger/ global picture is very well illustrated in that article. Very concerning stuff, particularly as the huge growing economies of China, India etc are probably the ones which need to be brought on board without hindering growth. That to me is a massive challenge.
Peter
Always interesting to get a different perspective although I’d be hard pushed to be convinced global warming isn’t an issue and in some way responsible for the apparent increase in extreme weather events over recent years.
My point was relative to wildfires and that EFFIS data shows that rather than becoming more extreme they are in fact decreasing.
Interesting, your use of the phrase “apparent increase in extreme weather events”.
Of course this is to be expected. As the climate warms it does so more towards the poles. This reduces the temperature difference between the polar and the equatorial zones, that temperature difference being a key driver of weather.
Willy.
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There was a guy on Radio 5 this morning, an expert from some European forestry agency.
He pointed out some specific reasons Greek islands are on fire.
Decades ago, inhabitants of the Greek islands cultivated as much of the land they could. That was the only way of making a living. Today people can make an easier living from tourism. Land is abandoned, left to become overgrown, causing a fire risk.
The Greeks don’t have a lot of fire fighting aircraft.
In recent times, the responsibility of fire prevention/control in rural areas was taken out of the control of the forestry agencies and put in the control of URBAN authorities.
Fire fighters priority is to evacuate people (and they seem to do a good job of this) not fight the fires.
So. Global warming is a thing. But not the main reason the Greeks are having problems with out of control fires.
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Some extreme leaps to conclusions in that article and conclusions based on data that stops 12-13 years ago.