SnowBear

Much of that is down to cultivation of modern vines which are able to withstand colder climates. Old world vines species were alot different.

I see the BBC are running this article this morning. UK's 40C heatwave 'basically impossible' without climate change WWW.BBC.CO.UK Human-caused climate change made the high temperatures last week much more likely, say scientists. No, it wasn't impossible, the UK has seen those types of temperatures before in Roman times when grapes were grown in even northern parts of England. I also find the article somewhat contradicting, in one part it says we will see similar "in coming years" (which to me is the next decade or so) yet another part says "even in today's climate its a once in 500 to 1,500 year event. It also laments on our buildings and infrastructure not being resilient to those types of temperatures, no, even if we see 40c for two or three days once every decade now it would not outweigh the need to insulate and build for winter temperatures. What can be done is to plant more trees to give shade over houses etc. This is something they do in Australia, and where trees won't grow they use artificial shading such as sun sail shades. I have one for the patio and it makes a huge difference to temperatures in the kitchen in hot weather in shading the house and also stopping the slabs heating up and radiating heat in any open windows. When I was a child we had far more trees in urban areas, many streets which once had avenues of trees either side, are now just grass verge where cars are parked. Admittedly Dutch Elm took many of those trees, I remember in Ipswich loads of them having to be cut down, but they were never replaced. The street I live in now in Colchester had trees either side, only 1 or 2 remain. Often now, and this has happened in two neighbours gardens recently, when it was sold all greenery was stripped, hedges, trees, shrubs, and left with just a patch of grass, no shade. I've been told it's because it makes it easier to sell. Trees, oh, and if you think the Jubilee carbon footprint has been offset by planting loads of trees all over the place, a small park near me had about 200 saplings planted as part of the Jubilee tree planting exercise, none have been looked after since and I doubt 5% have survived. Plant trees, they give shade, prevent the ground beneath taking in heat and acting as a radiator, gives somewhere for animals and birds to find refuge from extremes of weather, and if you plant the right trees may even give you nuts, apples etc at harvest time.

Not quite sure who you are having a dig at Ed? I dont think any of us are questioning climate change or that co2 is different whether man made or natural. What isn't so clear is whether it's all down to co2, or is there other mechanisms at play, along with other human activities which could be even more important than co2. With the climate of our planet being as complex as it is every single aspect must be looked into, every chemical, every feedback, every action, and all that is going to take time. Right now we can act on co2, but we can't sit back and say that's that then, job done.

Its all about the news titles now tbh. In the past we would have seen "Scientists claim dark matter is real" or "Scientists find evidence of...." we get "Dark matter is real". Whether its due to journos being lazy, or to grab news headlines, or a bit of both? I suspect a big part is journos being lazy, no such thing as BBC English anymore and the art of writing accurate headlines has long gone.

I think as its an emotive subject but equally hugely complex and went off the original question quite quickly as probably expected. The BBC are biased, have been for years. But it was a starting point for some interesting posts, and that's no bad thing.

I think there is a point which should be raised as to what counts as "pollution". Without doubt some of the gases from internal combustion engines are, and lead to that yellow hue that you speak of. But there are gases and particulates which are essentially part of our weather systems. Smoke from wildfires left to their own devises are part of that system, many plants and trees have evolved to live with fire, many won't germinate without it. We now actively suppress wildfires vigorously, where once large areas would burn every so often, releasing smoke particles and gases into the atmosphere, some cooling, some warming, but leaving behind a fertile tract of land which very very quickly begins to regrow and flourish. This was seen after the Australian Bush Fires a few years ago, the land absolutely exploded with life. Obviously we have encroached on those areas which are prone to burn once every 10, 20, 50 or 100 or so years, whatever its cycle is. How much does our suppressing of biological cycles have an effect on weather systems? Recently we have had extreme dryness in the UK, previously this would probably have been a time when wildfires renewed the land, cleared away the old and rotten, and allowed new growth to appear. The ash from those fires (potash.. which I had to laugh at an article the other day which said "x acres of stubble destroyed".. Like.. Eh? Best thing for that field fertiliser wise Lol) creates a rich land of nutrients which would feed the new growth. So. Fire, which we suppress, creates particles, which become part of the weather systems. Thoughts?

Has anyone quantified the urban heat island effect? Consider London, once quite small city really, now a motorway 176 miles long encircles it. Most greenery and fields have gone, and its become one big mass of bricks, tarmac and concrete. On a smaller scale it will act as a heat pump similar to what we have seen recently over the continent and the heat reaching here. The heat generated in London will rise during the day, and at night slowly fall and spread out over surrounding areas. Now multiply by all the big cities and built up areas around the world how much does UHI contribute to the equation?

I think you need to read this and see what you think, it's not an increase in overall temperature, but an increase in range between night and day, the night time warming overrides the day time reflection/shading. When 9/11 grounded all planes they noted a 2 degree increase in range, ie: night time temps were lower. Like regular cirrus clouds, contrail cirrus clouds have two competing effects on climate. They shade us by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. But they also trap heat radiating from the earth’s surface, so causing warming in the air below. During the day, cooling compensates part of the warming. But at night, with no sunlight, only the warming effect operates. Red-eye flights are a red light for climate. That’s the theory, and observational evidence backs it up. Research in the American South and Midwest has concluded that when contrails are around, they raise night-time temperatures sufficiently to reduce the day-night differences by 3 degrees C. Source: How Airplane Contrails Are Helping Make the Planet Warmer E360.YALE.EDU New research shows that condensation trails from aircraft exhaust are playing a significant role in global warming. Experts are concerned that efforts to change aviation engine design to...

I do think there are parameters and mechanisms at play beyond just Co2. Co2 is only one gas which causes warming, there are also others, water vapour as you mention being the principle, plus others such as methane etc. Along with co2 we may have feedbacks from changes in vegetation, trees are long term plants, they take from the atmosphere for often many hundreds of years before they fall and decay giving back various decomposition gases, methane and so on. Our farming of vast areas of land now instead of trees may well be one such feedback unaccounted for. Short life crops are harvested of their product, the rest is composted in very short order, giving out large quantities of gases. A few composting facilities do harvest the gases, and they are becoming more common, but in areas where field crops are grown such as grain, is that balance the same as having trees? We have destroyed huge areas of forest since our emergence as farmers and certainly for the past 1,000 years, and not just for farming practice but construction etc as well. Water vapour produced by aircraft contrails are another possible cause, thousands and thousands of planes feeding water vapour high into the atmosphere. Another thread on here had a link to a piece of research which said this could be mitigated somewhat by altering the flight levels by just 2,000 feet. But also there could be background variations in climate happening which are quite natural. The earth constantly changes, areas once dry become wet, and visa versa, and those changes can happen quite quickly if certain patterns in weather become stuck for some years. In a hugely complex system as the earth's climate its very difficult to figure out what drives what and where and often just when you think you have a handle on it, nature does something completely out of the ordinary and unexpected. Yes I do believe we are causing warming, but by what degree I don't know, I don't think it's all down to us, or at least down to purely co2.

With the know how to bugger it up... Or perhaps that's our role? To increase Co2 so plants can take over the world? Hehe In truth Mother Nature has seen far higher temperatures than we see today, and far colder, life survived, she doesn't care, she can exist in any state in between. We need a fairly small window of temperature ranges to be able to survive for any length of time, and to do that we need to learn to adapt, and also learn to balance what we do. If we get wiped out I can quite well believe life will go on, in a short few thousand of years our tracks will soon begin to be covered over. We have consequences now, but in the long age of the world we are inconsequential. We should all tread as light as possible on the earth, take a little as we need (note need, not want) and try and give back, plant trees, look after special echo-systems, cut back on the mass industrial and personal waste. I hold little hope of any of that though while the world is driven by money and greed.

Well, they kinda do until they get found out. Boris is an example, flatly denied any parties, yet....... Fortunately in the day and age of the Internet and cctv etc, it's not so easy to hide away. But that's drifting off the subject.

Problem is Ed, "scientists" can be "bought". Also,, what we have now is a situation where the problem is being looked at from an economic point of view, politically and financially, what we need is a holistic look. A complete look at how we live, how much we travel, what and how we make so much that we don't actually need and all sorts. Its OK really I guess... we can either do that now... Or Mother Nature will force us to some short time down the line for sure. But while you have the world as is now, you will never get truth or aims to do what is needed.

I think it's far more complex than that. If we look at the seasons, once Midsummer's day passes we don't see a gradual cool down from then to the Winter Solstice, infact the warmest part of the year is after Midsummer's day as we have just seen, July and early August often being the hottest part of the year once the heat has built up. So although the Milankovitch cycles may mean less radiation is reaching the surface right now, there are forcings from before, perhaps hundreds of years back, still to play out before we start to cool. I don't deny we have meddled in our earth's climate, but I don't think it's all down to us, or CO2. One big question still to be answered in the Milankovitch cycles is why it changed about 800k years ago from a fairly regular 41k year cycle of ice ages into a new cycle. The Mayans fairly accurately gauged precession, that cycle ended in around 2012 with the restart of their calendar, but it will be some time yet before we feel the effects of that change. So what exactly is going on? In my view mini deserts and heat pumps in every city getting larger yearly, the wasting of forests, changing land usage (look at just the UK, once covered in forest, now fields and buildings etc), wasteful and unnecessary journies and a whole host of other small changes being made to the earth all making a big difference. Its quite right we should all reduce our carbon footprint, we know its causing warming and not good, but there are so many other feedbacks and behaviours we need to look at too. I fear they won't be, far too much money is being made from it. But not all of this is down to us, the climate constantly changes, and always has done, sometimes quite rapidly. In geological terms we have been on this planet a mere blink of an eye. So many parameters in a chaotic system. What we need to do is work out how to adapt and stop behaviours which exasperate climate change, and that's beyond just CO2. Less air travel, less unnecessary journeys, less material greed for things we don't need, more greenery, and generally more respect for the planet we live on.

Personally I believe the current warming we see is the result of a far more complex set of feedbacks (both natural and manmade), cycles and ongoing shifts in climates than is thought. The trouble is finding info that hasn't got a political or economic slant to it. I do think, and it's has to be expected, that we have made some impact, if we continue to tear up trees, pave over large areas, put up buildings and so forth it will inevitably change local climates and the Butterfly Effect will mean it will also change things further afield. For example London, now a big sprawling area of concrete, tarmac and stone, where once not all that long ago was fields, hedges and trees. As outer lying towns were swallowed up, the roads between built up around, the greenery disappeared. Urban sprawl is not confined to just London, nearly every major town has seen the same, and indeed we even see it in villages now in this mad rush to build houses. So now.often outer lying areas see higher temperatures due to the Urban Heat Island effect, the heat builds, it has to go somewhere. I bike to work, and the route takes me along a tarmac cycleway and also through a little wood of about 20 trees. The difference in temperature when you enter that little wood is immense. It can be blazing hot where there are no trees on the cycleway in the new build area but lovely and cool in that little wood. So the amount of greenery as in trees, hedges etc is one thing I think has made a big impact. Second is the Clean Air Act. Done with all good intention, to clean the air, but I do think it had an unforeseen feedback in that cleaning the air has allowed more sunlight to reach ground level, a ground level which we are increasingly degreening and building on. See paragraphs above. Another which many won't speak on is air travel, a huge industry. We have seen experiments whereby chemicals have been released by planes to create rainfall, just one or two planes, seeding clouds to make it rain. The exhaust from planes creates huge amounts of water, as we see in contrails, and its released quite high up day after day, thousands of planes every day. This is without the CO2 they produce. Water itself can be quite efficient in being a warming gas, short lived admittedly but its continually being replaced... Over my house every 5 to 10 minutes or so. We have seen a huge rise in global temperature since roughly 1980, and that coincides with the explosion of air travel. But beside our interference, there is also the ever changing face of the earth a gradually shift of climates as time goes on. The Inca and Aztecs were continually moving over long periods in Central America as the areas which were susceptible to drought changed due to precession. In the age of the Pharaohs the Nile river area was very different to now. There will still be slow feedback changes left over and continuing from the Ice Ages, which in geological time was "yesterday". We have impacted the climate with no doubt, but its not all about CO2, and could even be that CO2 is not the main reason. Are we responsible for all the warming, no, I don't think so, but we could be modifying feedbacks which are not perhaps desirable to do. Our behaviour all told needs to change, and for once we need to put all political and economic factors aside, to sit down and watch, and listen, to Mother Earth, she speaks to us, but no one listens. Humans are arrogant and think they know it all, but then I think some do know more but won't let on as it would change the political and economic face of the globe totally.

We had 100f here and my two cats just curled up and slept all day, one on their big cushion they have and one in the latest cardboard delivery box (any delivery with a box big enough they have until its rejected and then gets cut up for recycling lol). I did add extra water to their wet food though over those two days and they had plenty of water about. To them though it was a two day long siesta!

No thunder which is surprising considering the rainfall, lovely heavy shower just now in Colchester, dropped 4c or so off the temp too.

27c still in the kitchen, was 28c in the bedroom when I got home from work, all windows open now to try and cool the house down.

Beginning to wonder if you work for or have shares in Davis!

I think I'll just wait for the official announcements by the MetOffice once they have verified the values they receive.

29c outside at 10.30pm,28c in the kitchen, 29/30c bedroom

Short rain shower in Colchester, still 29c at 10.30pm, warm breeze.

Dont have to cut it at the moment that's for sure lol All mine has yellowed now, just a few weeds still holding on hehe

24.5c outside, 25c in the kitchen, 24/25 bedroom, windows now open to let the night air in and make use of any breeze.

24.5c at 10.45pm in Colchester.

In East Anglia we are classed as semi arid, less than 600mm rain per year.