The New Ice Age
So here we are, almost at the end of March and winter continues on with seemingly no end. How do we react to this? Well as a country, with a lot of general mumbling and grumbling, a lot of sensationalist headlines from the usual suspects in the media, lots of ill-informed opinion all round really.
Yes, everyone has their own cliched opinions, or things they have overheard others saying that they repeat because they think it sounds clever. It's not just the weather this applies to - just the crap most people spout in general really - a kind of verbal plagiaristic diarrhoea - VPD I shall call it for short.
Here's the fairly predictable front page of today's Express.
So - amongst all the hyperbole and VPD, what facts can be gleaned from all this? Because that's what I deal in - facts, numbers, statistics. Unlike most people. We all have a Great Aunt Gladys tucked away somewhere who reminisces on about the long glorious hot summers when she was a girl and how we always had a White Christmas. The facts just don't bear this out I'm afraid.
The problem with trying to spot long term trends in the British weather is that we live in such a variable climate that it is constantly changing - and people's memories are short. Plenty of people in the January snowstorm were saying things like "I've never seen anything like it", when in fact the snowfalls of December 2010 were significantly worse.
So in the interest of providing some facts, I have been delving back into the history books, trying to see what the patterns - if any, are.
We are currently on a run of very snowy winters, and very bad summers, but is this anything unusual? Or a sign of a permanent change.
Well during history there have been warmer and colder periods, so it is not impossible that the current patterns we are seeing might be indicative of a long term change. There was a period known as "The Little Ice Age" during the 17th and 18th centuries. This was a generally colder period - though not all the time - but it did have several spells of severe winters. Those old paintings you may have seen of Frost Fairs on the Thames - well this was when those took place. As an aside, Frost Fairs would be unlikely to occur now, even if the weather got as cold as then due to changes in the river flow since then with the building of various bridges which have broken up the river flow.
There was also a period known as the medieval warm period prior to that - back in the earlier part of the last millenium when the climate was much warmer in general.
These are established facts. So what can be gleaned from more recent events. Well you hear a lot of moaning about bad summers from people - so I looked back the hottest summers of my life since 1970 and came up with the following, based on statistics and personal (accurate) memories:
1975
1976
1983
1984
1989
1990
1994
1995
2003
2006
What is most interesting (aside from the fact that hot summers seem to come in pairs), is that there have only been two what I would class as hot in the last 18 years, and personal experience suggests that the last few have been exceptionally poor. From a personal perspective - about 12 years ago I bought an air conditioning unit - one of those that you hang a hose out of the window with and it sucks out the heat. This was an essential item just to sleep at night in those two hot summers since then, but every year it was used for at least a week or two in the hottest weather. It has been sat gathering dust for at least 3 years now - no longer needed.
But is this a long term trend? Well it's hard to say - go back further into time and look at the whole of the 60s for example - there were no notable hot summers then at all, and one very cold winter, 1963, but it seems weather wise, nothing particularly exciting happened in the 60s. Looking at winters, they also tend to come in bad clusters - they were exceptionally bad during the second world war, with three very bad ones in a row in the early 1940's - the last time there was a run like we have now.
And we are on a bad run now - since 2009 we have had an amazing snowy period, almost unprecedented, and very unexpected in the whole global warming scenario. Earlier in this century the media were confidently predicting that children growing up in the new millenium would not even know what snow was! How wrong they were - here is a link to an article that appeared in the Independent back in 2000 predicting that exact scenario!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Clearly that hasn't happened. So why when the world is warming are we getting such cold winters and awful summers now? One well known theory is that the gulf stream is switching off - therefore giving us a climate more suitable to the latitude we occupy (same as Canada). But is there enough evidence to support this? Are we really heading into a new ice age here in Britain?
You want an answer, I know - and I would love to make a bold statement - but I will hang fire for now, all I will say is - it is possible. I can't be conclusive as this just could be a run of poor summers and cold winters as has occurred throughout the last century.
One thing that is notable particularly about this year, is that I have never known it stay this cold for so long, for snowdrops to still be in flower this late, and for temperatures to remain so consistently low so late. The thermometer has barely got into double figures in the past 5 months. But it is still only March, we shouldn't panic just yet, however if we got to May and it was still like this, then I would seriously be starting to worry. That's when you would start hearing about "The Year Without A Summer" which was 1816. And we really don't want another one of those. Look it up if you want to know more.
It's meant to be the French market in town tomorrow - if it happens. But another hefty snowfall overnight could put paid to that. Strangely, another statistical quirk is that these heavy snows often seem to come on Saturdays but that's just randomness doing its work in a strangely non-random way.
If we have two or more years of the same, I might definitely be persuaded that things have changed. But we just don't know. We could be sitting here in 3 months time basking in the hottest June temperatures since records began, and all this cold weather will be a distant bad memory. Here's hoping.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
Jason xx
Yes, everyone has their own cliched opinions, or things they have overheard others saying that they repeat because they think it sounds clever. It's not just the weather this applies to - just the crap most people spout in general really - a kind of verbal plagiaristic diarrhoea - VPD I shall call it for short.
Here's the fairly predictable front page of today's Express.
 |
| The coldest March weekend for 50 years they will have us believe. |
So - amongst all the hyperbole and VPD, what facts can be gleaned from all this? Because that's what I deal in - facts, numbers, statistics. Unlike most people. We all have a Great Aunt Gladys tucked away somewhere who reminisces on about the long glorious hot summers when she was a girl and how we always had a White Christmas. The facts just don't bear this out I'm afraid.
The problem with trying to spot long term trends in the British weather is that we live in such a variable climate that it is constantly changing - and people's memories are short. Plenty of people in the January snowstorm were saying things like "I've never seen anything like it", when in fact the snowfalls of December 2010 were significantly worse.
So in the interest of providing some facts, I have been delving back into the history books, trying to see what the patterns - if any, are.
We are currently on a run of very snowy winters, and very bad summers, but is this anything unusual? Or a sign of a permanent change.
Well during history there have been warmer and colder periods, so it is not impossible that the current patterns we are seeing might be indicative of a long term change. There was a period known as "The Little Ice Age" during the 17th and 18th centuries. This was a generally colder period - though not all the time - but it did have several spells of severe winters. Those old paintings you may have seen of Frost Fairs on the Thames - well this was when those took place. As an aside, Frost Fairs would be unlikely to occur now, even if the weather got as cold as then due to changes in the river flow since then with the building of various bridges which have broken up the river flow.
 |
| Imagine living back then, you would really have had something to complain about! |
There was also a period known as the medieval warm period prior to that - back in the earlier part of the last millenium when the climate was much warmer in general.
These are established facts. So what can be gleaned from more recent events. Well you hear a lot of moaning about bad summers from people - so I looked back the hottest summers of my life since 1970 and came up with the following, based on statistics and personal (accurate) memories:
1975
1976
1983
1984
1989
1990
1994
1995
2003
2006
What is most interesting (aside from the fact that hot summers seem to come in pairs), is that there have only been two what I would class as hot in the last 18 years, and personal experience suggests that the last few have been exceptionally poor. From a personal perspective - about 12 years ago I bought an air conditioning unit - one of those that you hang a hose out of the window with and it sucks out the heat. This was an essential item just to sleep at night in those two hot summers since then, but every year it was used for at least a week or two in the hottest weather. It has been sat gathering dust for at least 3 years now - no longer needed.
But is this a long term trend? Well it's hard to say - go back further into time and look at the whole of the 60s for example - there were no notable hot summers then at all, and one very cold winter, 1963, but it seems weather wise, nothing particularly exciting happened in the 60s. Looking at winters, they also tend to come in bad clusters - they were exceptionally bad during the second world war, with three very bad ones in a row in the early 1940's - the last time there was a run like we have now.
And we are on a bad run now - since 2009 we have had an amazing snowy period, almost unprecedented, and very unexpected in the whole global warming scenario. Earlier in this century the media were confidently predicting that children growing up in the new millenium would not even know what snow was! How wrong they were - here is a link to an article that appeared in the Independent back in 2000 predicting that exact scenario!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Clearly that hasn't happened. So why when the world is warming are we getting such cold winters and awful summers now? One well known theory is that the gulf stream is switching off - therefore giving us a climate more suitable to the latitude we occupy (same as Canada). But is there enough evidence to support this? Are we really heading into a new ice age here in Britain?
You want an answer, I know - and I would love to make a bold statement - but I will hang fire for now, all I will say is - it is possible. I can't be conclusive as this just could be a run of poor summers and cold winters as has occurred throughout the last century.
One thing that is notable particularly about this year, is that I have never known it stay this cold for so long, for snowdrops to still be in flower this late, and for temperatures to remain so consistently low so late. The thermometer has barely got into double figures in the past 5 months. But it is still only March, we shouldn't panic just yet, however if we got to May and it was still like this, then I would seriously be starting to worry. That's when you would start hearing about "The Year Without A Summer" which was 1816. And we really don't want another one of those. Look it up if you want to know more.
It's meant to be the French market in town tomorrow - if it happens. But another hefty snowfall overnight could put paid to that. Strangely, another statistical quirk is that these heavy snows often seem to come on Saturdays but that's just randomness doing its work in a strangely non-random way.
If we have two or more years of the same, I might definitely be persuaded that things have changed. But we just don't know. We could be sitting here in 3 months time basking in the hottest June temperatures since records began, and all this cold weather will be a distant bad memory. Here's hoping.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
Jason xx
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