Wonder if someone would like to explain Mediterranean climates to these people?
‘Apocalypse’ of extreme temperatures leaves almost half of EU at risk of drought
The rain comes in winter and spring. It never does rain in summer – the odd thunderstorm aside. The drought is because of dry winters, not high summer temperatures.
If they’re not able to get the basics of climate right then why do we listen to them on climate?
A comment I made to my son yesterday: Are you enjoying the sort of weather people pay good money to go away for? All I’m hearing is: “It’s too hot, I can’t stand it”. Ask: “Got any holiday plans?” and you’ll hear something like “Oh yeah, we’re going to Sharm for a fortnight”.
Aye, Tim, quite so.
Though, right now, the odd thunderstorm would be welcome. No sign at the moment.
There is presumably a bit of extra evaporation from reservoirs due to the heat, but I wouldn’t have thought it significant.
@TomJ: nothing like 1976, then?
“why do we listen to them on climate?”
Does the Beeb broadcast anything else?
” If they’re not able to get the basics of climate right then why do we listen to them on climate?” .
I could be rather unkind and suggest it’s because many people who should know better have entertained their fantasies and sought the best means of how to deliver them instead of challenging them and showing they are a load of bollocks.
https://junkscience.com/2022/07/john-christy-debunks-climate-models-and-extreme-weather-hysteria-with-laura-ingraham-on-fox-news/
“The rain comes in winter and spring. It never does rain in summer”
Er, bollocks. Over the last 20 years we have had 8 summers where the rainfall exceeded 300mm (summer being defined meteorologically as June, July and August), which I can tell you is a very wet summer. In 2012 we got 374mm, which is more than average winter rainfall (Dec/Jan/Feb). Compared to just 2 such wet summers between 1960 and 2000. So summers have gotten far wetter, not drier in the ‘global warming/climate change’ era.
And August is not a dry month, its long term average rainfall is above March, April, May, June and July, and identical to September and February. Its rainfall is slap bang on the average monthly rainfall for the UK. It is not a dry month. I know this from real world experience – rain often ruins the grain harvest, which in the UK is supposed to be August, but often runs into September because of poor weather.
The whole point of the UK weather is its infinite variability. It can be hotter at Christmas than in June. It can be drier in January than August, it can snow almost any month, and we can have storms at any time. We can have long periods of unseasonable weather, wet summers, dry winters, cold springs, warm autumns etc etc.
God created weather so that farmers would have something to complain about, see Genesis chap 4. Also so Brits could make conversation.
Tim, the point you are trying to make is that rain that falls in the summer (quite a lot in the UK, as Jim points out) doesn’t permeate as effectively (evaporation etc) as rain falling when it’s cooler. Maybe you are talking about Portugal?
US commenter on UK weather many years ago “You have 5 months of winter and 7 months of bad weather”.
If you don’t like the weather in England, wait a minute.
Cold weather is weather. Hot weather is catastrophic anthropogenic climate chaos / crisis / change.
Er, bollocks. Over the last 20 years we have had 8 summers where the rainfall exceeded 300mm . . .
Jim, Tim is talking about the Mediterranean climate in the context of that Telegraph piece. I doubt he’s fully forgotten the joys of English summer weather.
. . . nothing like 1976, then?
This “heatwave” is nothing like 1976. That was three months of high pressure; sustained warmth / heat and low rainfall. This has been a fairly mundane summer so far (rather windy) and now we’ve been hit by one day of 30C followed by two days of 40C. Then it’s back to the low 20Cs.
Because of its short nature, I’ve adopted the blinds down / windows closed method of keeping the house cool (cooler than outside). Last night for comfortable sleeping I used a desk fan on low (with sweep to avoid permanent draft) behind which was placed a block of ice (4.5 litres of water in a 5 litre plastic bottle).
Looks like there’s a chance of a thunderstorm later. I hope it’s a cracker.
PJF, two 5 inch silent fans cable tied side by side run from a USB battery pack with two bottles of ice in front, sitting in a paint tray. Very Heath Robinson but works a treat and as I had all the bits, free.
Ice in front or behind the fan?
Ice in front or behind the fan?
Depends on the purpose. If the fan is there to direct cool air toward the user, the ice-in-front will act as an obstacle so behind seems best. If the fan is just to generally mix the cool air into the room then maybe in front is best, particularly if the cooled air can be deflected upwards.
A fan will add heat to the environment, so for cool air mixing it would probably be best to just suspend the bottled ice at the top of the room and allow convection to do the work. Directly over the bed will provide the advantage / disadvantage of condensed water* dripping onto the user.
* Even with bottled ice there will be free water about, so position electrical items carefully.
@Davidsb – “What are the landlords going to do – demolish the buildings?”
That’s what they did during the Irish potato famine. Well, strictly speaking, they only took the roof off. But the purpose was to make the place uninhabitable.
“now we’ve been hit by one day of 30C followed by two days of 40C.”
Make that two days of 30 in Jockland. Which isn’t remotely unusual. It’s just started raining in Glasgow. Oh, and just as I was about to hit “Post”, there goes the thunder.
Dear Mr Worstall
“‘Apocalypse’ of extreme temperatures leaves almost half of EU at risk of drought”
I read on a site a while back, probably Australian* where they know about this sort of thing, that drought causes high temperatures, not the other way round.
Perhaps they do things differently in the EU.
It’s forecast to rain tomorrow and temperatures are set to plummet.
DP
* Possibly Jo Nova’s site – https://joannenova.com.au/
BBC, Met, MSM: First Ever Red Warning on Temperature
Ahem, Temperature Warning propaganda system introduced last year
An empirical study on temperature Vs BBC/Met computer model temperature
1 https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1548984261990121473
2 https://dailysceptic.org/2022/07/18/whats-the-temperature-where-you-are-send-us-your-thermometer-readings-and-test-the-forecasts/