During January 2017 Europe suffered extremely low temperatures (as low as -26 degrees C) and heavy snow fell across the continent. Over 60 deaths were reported.
Harsher winters in Europe are thought to be one of the probable consequences of climate change due to two factors:
Slowing of the Gulf Stream.
This video explains what the Gulf Stream is and how climate scientists think warming could affect it:
Wavy Jetstream:
The artic is warming faster than the rest of the globe which is causing the Jet Stream to move slower and form bigger "waves". As a result weather patterns across Europe (and the rest of the world- especially the Northern Hemisphere) are changing and becoming more "persistant". Dr Francis explains how this all works in the video below (published 2014). She also ties some recent extreme weather events in the UK directly to their causes, as explained by climate change science.
Discussion Point - Climate Refugees
Below are some further links discussing the refugee issue during the recent extreme weather in Europe. Displaced people and communities and how we deal with them are likely to become a very significant issue as climate change advances. In countries like the UK, with natural borders how and how much, we help is a big question which divides society. Politicians are currently failing to formulate policy that citizens can agree on and the humanitarian issues that arise are already proving to be a challenge. A much bigger problem is on its way ...
New Years's Day 2017 turned out to be warm and wet. Apart from Storm Barbara which hit North West Scotland on Christmas Eve, the weather over the holiday period was far less "newsworthy" than that of the preceding year. Christmas 2016 had been very different. Floods had been making life a misery for thousands of people in the North of England since storm Desmond in early December and Boxing Day brought yet more extensive flooding across Yorkshire and Lancashire.
This year things have been a lot quieter and it's possible that many people have "forgotten" about last year, or put it out of their minds (unless they were directly affected, of course.) It's also possible that a proportion of the British public are of the opinion that the floods of 2015 were "just weather", albeit a particularly nasty bout of it. This collective amnesia and ability to "turn a blind eye" to how our weather is being driven by climate change is very dangerous. It is now a matter of urgency that we put pressure on our politicians and change our lifestyles in order to drastically reduce our carbon emissions. This is the only way we can avoid leaving the legacy of a much damaged world to our children and grandchildren.
I believe that public apathy is being supported by a lack of clear information in mainstream information sources about the increasing number of extreme weather events that we are seeing, both at home and across the globe and what is causing them. (Although plenty is to be found in the scientific and activist press). The public are not having the conclusions drawn for them in a forceful enough manner, it's easy for us to carry on with business as usual.
Weather Events and Climate Trends
Coverage of the 2015 floods did include some discussion in the mainstream media about the link to climate change, but scientists are currently hampered by the fact that tying local weather events to global climate trends with statistic supported certainty can only rarely be achieved. (Although ongoing research is making inroads into changing this).
However, on the opposite side of the "debate" (if it can be taken seriously enough to be called that) using weather "spin" is a fairly standard practise for climate change deniers, an extreme example of this type of rhetoric being the "Snowball in the Senate" incident in 2015.
A more recent, and more insidious example is that of an article in the Mail Online (David Rose Nov 2016) which claimed that a new study of the data had established that the high temperatures of 2016 were down to El Nino, not climate change, ie 2016's record temperatures were due to a weather event, not a climate trend. The article, and the resulting "noise" it generated across the media were, in fact, reporting on snapshot data which had been cherry-picked in an attempt to attempt to mislead the public and has been much criticised in the serious press but damage can easily be done that the rebuttal cannot so easily fix.
Because the weather is something we see every day it is a pretty powerful influence on our beliefs. If weather events are allowed to become the territory of the denier, as seems to be the case at the moment, then deniers have an exclusive hold on a pretty powerful tool. For this reason it is vital that weather "events" can be seen in the context of climate change. A connection rarely made by main stream weather reporting.
This is particularly important here in the UK because although we may be pretty obsessed with the weather, we are lagging behind most of the rest of the world in making the connection between our changing weather patterns and the reality of climate change caused by man-made global warming. If there is going to be any kind of effective grassroots action this needs to change, deniers cannot be allowed to have a voice that is capable of instilling doubt by using weather as a weapon.
In addition politicians need to be persuaded that we're serious about this, and that means that we need to be taking action. In order to be spurred into that action, whether as individuals or as communities, people have to know that what they see today is evidence that the snowball is already rolling.
I hope to be able to help, in however small a way, by bringing together information about the weather that has the potential to provoke such action, and by giving pointers as to what that action might be.
In essence this blog is an attempt to make the case that weather matters.
