Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHoneybees, Primroses In Bloom, Temperatures In The 60s - it's Mid-November In The UK
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Following soaring temperatures across Britain throughout 2022 and a distinct lack of rain, we knew better than to expect our weather to resume its familiar winter course. An African plume of hot air whipping off the tropics, the Azores and Cape Verde has lifted Londons temperatures 8C above average. Porthmadog, north Wales, had a high of 21.2C on Remembrance Sunday. And were still pursuing a limit on global temperature rise of 1.5C.
Everyone is talking about it. Yet we can only take off layers of clothing so many times before we see the absurdity of it all. Halloween, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Sunday, the opening of the Christmas markets key moments in the wests autumn and winter calendar are clinging on to thawing nostalgia. But the people in power who are supposed to respond to this crisis arent listening.
As I write in a T-shirt, Im tense. Not from cold, but because Ive seen more bees in the past 10 days than I did in May. Primroses, a reliable indicator of early spring, are blooming on the verge. Despite the south-east swimming in its wettest first week of November on record, much of the UK remains gripped by drought. Thames Water will maintain its temporary hosepipe ban until 2023, joining areas in Yorkshire and Cornwall in a hangover from the summer. Reservoirs in south-west England are at their lowest levels in more than 130 years.
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Should I be relieved? Freak weather event implies rarity. A fluke, even. A forgivable blunder? If only. Because, despite its weak link to this particular African plume, the human-induced climate crisis will normalise the abnormal. Greenhouse gases pushing global temperatures more than 1.1C above pre-industrial levels will make those jet-stream wanderings less random, and more frequent. This November is warming us up for a redefining of the seasons in the UK. A forecast of the planets life expectancy. I think of water. Already polluted and deteriorating, what will warmer winters do to British rivers? How will endangered, keystone species such as Atlantic salmon ever recover if their eggs incubate in balmy toxic algal blooms, instead of cold, clean fresh water? And how will oceans, woodlands, grasslands and uplands ever regenerate at scale if the climate crisis causes the clock to consistently chime ahead of the season?
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/18/warm-autumn-britain-seasons-november-climate-crisis
AllaN01Bear
(17,346 posts)other than a brief week of rain , we are mostly sunny and temps in the mid 50s where i am. surface charts show sunny throuhout most of the us , except some rain in the puget sound area and along the gulf coast of texas . buffalo new york usa got 77 inches (195 cm ) of sonow .
2naSalit
(86,031 posts)Arctic air mass headed your way, soon.
https://www.aviationweather.gov/satellite/intl?region=b1