One of the predicted outcomes of global climate change is the phenomena of “global weirding”. This basically says that extremes of weather will become more common.
Image by Bidgee |
Of course, there is rather natural expected variation in the weather and extreme phenomena have always occurred. The claim is that global warming is making record breaking weather more and more common. |
In the UK
The Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) held a joint briefing in London. They warned that a the UK must get ready for for regular swings of drought conditions and flooding.
This summer?
This summer was the wettest in the UK for 100 years, according to Met Office figures. The Environment Agency issued over 1,000 river flood alerts and warnings for the period of the 1st June at 15th July. This was the most alerts issued in a summer since 2007.
Then in August the hottest temperature recorded was 32.4°C at Cavendish, Suffolk, on 18 August.
The UK mean temperature was 0.4 °C above the 1981-2010 average. It was a wet month in south-west England and south Wales and in northern England, southern and eastern Scotland, with a few areas having over twice the average rainfall. In contrast much of East Anglia and south-east England and parts of north-west Scotland and the west of Northern Ireland were drier than normal. Many areas were somewhat duller than usual, the sunnier exceptions being Northern Ireland and the western side of Scotland.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2012/august.html
Cold winters
The winter of 2010-2011 came early, with snow in the United Kingdom falling in November 2010. This was the earliest snowfall in 17 years. A night time low temperature of −9.1 °C was recorded on the 25th/26th at Redesdale Camp, Northumberland. From January on the winter conditions were more normal.
The winter of 2009–2010 was known as “The Big Freeze” here in the UK and was part of the severe winter weather in Europe. It was the coldest winter since 1978-79, with a mean temperature of 1.5 °C.
The question
The BIG question must be is this all due to global weirding, or is this normal variations?
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