{"id":1883,"date":"2013-04-08T21:40:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T20:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2013-06-27T16:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T15:43:40","slug":"climate-gone-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883","title":{"rendered":"Climate gone crazy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy did a blog post a few weeks ago on a warning from the UK chief scientist as he retired about the dangers of climate change.\u00a0 At the weekend there was a very interesting article in the Observer (on our FB wall) about the weather we have had in the UK over the last three years.\u00a0 We have always had very changeable weather in the UK.\u00a0 We are right next to the Atlantic of another landmass Europe (which many seem to forget) and have weather systems that come from the Arctic and Russia (which is pretty much the next stop in some directions).\u00a0 Someone from the middle of Canada told me once that the weather changed very slowly there.\u00a0 If you saw a cloud you’d see it in the sky for days.\u00a0 I don’t know whether this is true, but in the UK we are used to changeable weather.\u00a0 We don’t get four seasons in one day but three is possible. This makes us talk about it obsessively even though in the past its not been extreme.<\/p>\n

So we have been used to changeable weather.\u00a0 But what has happened over the last decade and a half or so has been something else.\u00a0 When looking back on when you were young there is a tendency to over romanticise and remember only the good weather.\u00a0 The summers were always hot and the winters were always snowy.\u00a0 This wasn’t actually true I’m sure.\u00a0 We had a famously hot summer with a very bad drought in 1976.\u00a0 There was water rationing.\u00a0 That summer we went on holiday to the south of France (which was normally very hot).\u00a0 When we returned my parents lawn was completely brown and dead.\u00a0 Then the government made Denis Powell minister for the drought and it rained a few days later.\u00a0 The lawn recovered so fast, greening overnight.\u00a0 However, in those days it rained steadily in winter with some snow.\u00a0 You could get snow in even March\/April and we had something vaguely like a summer.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Viburnum<\/a><\/dt>\n
Viburnum leaves in autumn<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Fast forward to the mid nineties in Scotland and I see the weather pattern really start to change.\u00a0 In noticed when I had a garden with two plants in particular.\u00a0 One a climbing Hydrangea and the other a Viburnum.\u00a0 Both when we starting living here would start going into their Autumnal colours almost exactly at the end of August.\u00a0 By the end of September all the leaves would be gone.<\/p>\n

By the millennium this didn’t happen.\u00a0 The leaves on these and all the trees around would stay on to an extent until November.\u00a0 The picture above was taken on the 20th October last year as you can see the leaves are just starting to change.\u00a0 In about five years my growing season had extended by at least a month.\u00a0 It has continued this way.\u00a0 At the same time the weather got warmer but wetter in summer.\u00a0 About 2005 we noticed we were getting very heavy localised downpours especially in the spring, much more frequently.\u00a0 Our gutters and downpipes couldn’t cope with the amount of water.\u00a0 The basement of my church flooded one Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The weather has continued to change.\u00a0 The winters had become so warm I can remember instances of not needing the heating on.\u00a0 Then in the winter of 2008\/9 was extremely cold.\u00a0 The temperature almost everywhere didn’t rise above -6 degrees C for 6 weeks.\u00a0 The next winter was the same with a prolonged cold snap shorter (only a month) but with lots more snow.\u00a0 There was a brief thaw for a few hours on Saturday in the middle.\u00a0 That when we and half our city lost our gutters as the half metre of snow that had collected rolled down the roof and took the gutters with it.\u00a0 The next winter reverted to being fairly mild, but this one has been cold with snow even April something outside the memory of most of us.<\/p>\n

More weather weirdness has followed.\u00a0 Last year we had the second wettest year ever after a very dry winter, large parts of England had a hosepipe ban going into the spring of 2012.\u00a0 This is another strange thing – very dry winters with no rain.\u00a0 A few years ago my Apple tree’s new spring leaves turned yellow and almost all dropped of due to lack of water in April!\u00a0 In late March last year we sat out in our T-shirts reading in the garden.\u00a0 The temperature was in the 20’s.\u00a0 Parts of the garden were so dry plants were wilting. Then the temperature dropped 24 degrees C in 24 hours and it started snowing.\u00a0 Then it started raining and didn’t stop much until the Autumn (it did clear up for the Olympics).\u00a0 Whilst America had a drought we had places that had never flooded, flooding more than once in the same “summer”.\u00a0 At the same time the heavy isolated short showers have stopped.\u00a0 The rain is now heavy and continuous.<\/p>\n

The worrying thing is that this maybe related to man made climate change.\u00a0 This weather in the US and UK last year and Pakistan and Russia previously is due to the Jetstream.\u00a0 This band of air moves from West to East between the Arctic and tropics and is slowing down and meandering.\u00a0 Its traps weather systems beneath it when it does so.\u00a0 For us and the US its been trapping the wrong ones.\u00a0 The theory is this maybe due to the melting Arctic ice sheet in summer.\u00a0 This is a very worrying theory.\u00a0 Food production in the US and UK was devastated.<\/p>\n

As Christians we need to take our responsibilities to creation seriously.\u00a0 The only comment I will allow myself to make on Mrs Thatcher was that she fully accepted the science of climate change.\u00a0 Sir John Houghton (an evangelical Christian) recounted how he was sent to Downing street with a flip chart to explain it to her.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy did a blog post a few weeks ago on a warning from the UK chief scientist as he retired about the dangers of climate change.\u00a0 At the weekend there was a very interesting article in the Observer (on our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-climate-change"],"yoast_head":"\nclimate change and UK weather<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"about the weather we have had in the UK over the last three years\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883\",\"name\":\"climate change and UK weather\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leaves-in-autumn-300x201.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-08T20:40:05+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-06-27T15:43:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/b6f2831189b0d01294e9672bb540ba6f\"},\"description\":\"about the weather we have had in the UK over the last three years\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leaves-in-autumn-300x201.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leaves-in-autumn-300x201.jpeg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=1883#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Climate gone crazy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The oil lamp - 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