Worryingly dry

[FetchCB]

20 minutes ago, PeteG said:

You must have taken a roundabout route - Peterborough is about 75 miles from central London. 120 miles would take you to Nottingham.

South West London which via a1, a426, M1, 25 is 120 miles.. So yes roundabout route 

[Dark Horse]

2 hours ago, MP-R said:

A look through the chart archives would say otherwise…

Off you toddle then...over a month of dry weather is enough evidence for me plus most of winter was dry compared to the norm but you know that

Edited June 11, 2023 by Dark Horse

[MP-R]

1 hour ago, Dark Horse said:

Off you toddle then...over a month of dry weather is enough evidence for me plus most of winter was dry compared to the norm but you know that

Head in the sand for you then eh.

[piglet]

May 2023 Met Office figures

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/regional-values

Just starting 5th week of zero or < 1-mm rainfall, coupled with oppressive heat, not nice.

 

[ANYWEATHER]

5 hours ago, Weather-history said:

It would be interesting to see how the UK especially England and Wales would have coped with its water resources if we were getting the kind of  rainfalls totals that were recorded during the late Victorian/Edwardian period.

 16 years, (2007-2022) England and Wales (EWP) rainfall average per annum: 986mm

Compare that to 1887-1902 per annum: 846.5mm

The last 16 years were about 140mm wetter per year on average than the end of the Victorian and the start of Edwardian period. That was up to 1903, which was a very wet year but that was a blip (and it stands out like a sore thumb) as it return to form with another dryish period up to almost start of WW1.

1940s, 7 of those years were sub 900mm for annual rainfall for England and Wales including 5 on the bounce from 1941-1945,  there have been 5 since and including 2000.

 

 

I really don’t know why people expect the weather not to change some what over the decades and centuries. It’s part of the natural world. Weather goes in cycles as part of the bigger wheel of cycles. We must remember that what is out of the ordinary and not known before is the population density and this country is a good example of this. 

[Methuselah]

20 minutes ago, ANYWEATHER said:

I really don’t know why people expect the weather not to change some what over the decades and centuries. It’s part of the natural world. Weather goes in cycles as part of the bigger wheel of cycles. We must remember that what is out of the ordinary and not known before is the population density and this country is a good example of this. 

Aye, but natural cycles can go both up and down; what we have now is just up? 

[Ross90]

7 minutes ago, Methuselah said:

Aye, but natural cycles can go both up and down; what we have now is just up? 

Over how long though? 10, 20, even 100 years isn't that long in terms of long term weather cycles. I'm not saying it's not being caused by us but how much of it is being caused by us will always be open to debate as we just don't have the data to tell us exactly what the weather was doing thousands of years ago.

[Methuselah]

8 minutes ago, Ross90 said:

Over how long though? 10, 20, even 100 years isn't that long in terms of long term weather cycles. I'm not saying it's not being caused by us but how much of it is being caused by us will always be open to debate as we just don't have the data to tell us exactly what the weather was doing thousands of years ago.

Well, that's the thing, Ross: Natural cycles (Milankovitch) operate glacially, pardon the pun; I can't think of anything natural that's caused us to see 32C, every year, almost without fail.

[piglet]

9 minutes ago, Ross90 said:

Over how long though? 10, 20, even 100 years isn't that long in terms of long term weather cycles. I'm not saying it's not being caused by us but how much of it is being caused by us will always be open to debate as we just don't have the data to tell us exactly what the weather was doing thousands of years ago.

They certainly didn't have the means to measure carbon dioxide accurately at parts per million leveis, but we do now.

I'm open to suggestions, but 33% increase in 50 years looks suspiciously like human activity.

My greatest concern, though, is the loss of arctic ice and glacial retreat as that can quickly go into runaway degradation.

 

[Dark Horse]

2 hours ago, MP-R said:

Head in the sand for you then eh.

As if.

[hillbilly]

4 hours ago, piglet said:

They certainly didn't have the means to measure carbon dioxide accurately at parts per million leveis, but we do now.

I'm open to suggestions, but 33% increase in 50 years looks suspiciously like human activity.

My greatest concern, though, is the loss of arctic ice and glacial retreat as that can quickly go into runaway degradation.

 

Many civilisations collapsed due to drought including the Maya and Ming Dynasty.Drought is nothing new!

 

[Weather-history]

On 11/06/2023 at 08:15, Weather-history said:

It would be interesting to see how the UK especially England and Wales would have coped with its water resources if we were getting the kind of  rainfalls totals that were recorded during the late Victorian/Edwardian period.

 16 years, (2007-2022) England and Wales (EWP) rainfall average per annum: 986mm

Compare that to 1887-1902 per annum: 846.5mm

The last 16 years were about 140mm wetter per year on average than the end of the Victorian and the start of Edwardian period. That was up to 1903, which was a very wet year but that was a blip (and it stands out like a sore thumb) as it return to form with another dryish period up to almost start of WW1.

1940s, 7 of those years were sub 900mm for annual rainfall for England and Wales including 5 on the bounce from 1941-1945,  there have been 5 since and including 2000.

 

 

The title of the thread is "worryingly dry". Why is it worryingly dry?

September 2022-April 2023 was wetter than the same period in 1975-76 for England and Wales: 793.5mm, that is just very slightly more than was recorded during the whole of 1976. That is more that was recorded during 2011.

So there has been somewhat of an offset against the dry conditions of the summer of 2022 that  didn't happen during September 1975-April 1976: 430.2mm.  Hence why we were really struggling during the summer of 1976. 

 

And the stats I posted above, we are not a decade into a protracted period of drier than normal conditions. 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Weather-history

[mb018538]

18 hours ago, piglet said:

They certainly didn't have the means to measure carbon dioxide accurately at parts per million leveis, but we do now.

I'm open to suggestions, but 33% increase in 50 years looks suspiciously like human activity.

My greatest concern, though, is the loss of arctic ice and glacial retreat as that can quickly go into runaway degradation.

 

The evidence seems overwhelming to me, if people who say we aren't to blame and that it is natural cycles....then where does all of our emissions go?

There is always a trade off/payback, and our constant burning of fossil fuels can't just be going along nicely with no consequences. It's just massively ramped up with the population explosion and industrialisation of a much larger percentage of the Earth in the last 40 years that has accelerated this.

[sunny_vale]

19 hours ago, ANYWEATHER said:

I really don’t know why people expect the weather not to change some what over the decades and centuries. It’s part of the natural world. Weather goes in cycles as part of the bigger wheel of cycles. We must remember that what is out of the ordinary and not known before is the population density and this country is a good example of this. 

That's a bit of a distortion of the truth. You're correct in saying that the Earth's climate changes in cycles. This is over thousands of years though, not such extreme shifts within decades as currently being experienced.

[piglet]

41 minutes ago, Weather-history said:

The title of the thread is "worryingly dry". Why is it worryingly dry?

September 2022-April 2023 was wetter than the same period in 1975-76 for England and Wales: 793.5mm, that is just very slightly more than was recorded during the whole of 1976. That is more that was recorded during 2011.

So there has been somewhat of an offset against the dry conditions of the summer of 2022 that  didn't happen during September 1975-April 1976: 430.2mm.  Hence why we were really struggling during the summer of 1976. 

 

And the stats I posted above, we are not a decade into a protracted period of drier than normal conditions. 

 

 

 

Well, I had to call it something.

It's dry and it worries me.

I can see that you are much further North in an area noted for wet weather, or is that just newspaper talk?

It's a different story here, fifth week now and no rain.

The ground is looking parched, what passes as a patch of lawn is largely brown and won't recover until October, my small pools are way down on water level, the leaves are falling from trees, I'm out of about 1000-litres of stored rainwater. If I don't water every other day, I might just as well not bother trying to grow anything.

All that wet weather earlier in the year is a distant memory now.

The domestic water supply is from chalk aquifers, no reservoirs. Yes, the levels are good, but more and more development is putting a strain on supply and waste disposal. In these dry periods, local streams rely on treated waste water to survive. Already, pollutants like nitrates are being pulled down because of extra demand. At least half of the local boreholes are affected by nitrate pollution.

Last year, I stood on the turf of the South Downs, and other than tree shaded areas, the local patch was brown carpet wall to wall.

Of course it doesn't bother some, but it bothers me.

[TROY]

You are so right, we had zero rainfall here in East Dene since May 8th. But A thunderstorm rolled in around midnight, which gave  some rainfall at last. 2 hours at least, until I Fell asleep at 2am. But Our climate has becoming much drier in the summer and hotter. But we seem to have a new monsoon season from late November  to March.

[piglet]

14 hours ago, hillbilly said:

Many civilisations collapsed due to drought including the Maya and Ming Dynasty.Drought is nothing new!

 

With respect, comparing past  civilisation's events with today's situation is irrelevant.

Those were probably local events - someone will dig out some stats to say otherwise - but more importantly, those civilisations were not causing global changes.

Increased population, increased demands on resources, decades of burning oil, gas and coal are making a difference, we, or at least the scientists know that and we are in a position to start to reverse those changes.

It's likely that the Mayans would have blamed it on the Rain God, but things have moved on since then.

[TROY]

I Think that when you look at how much farmland has been replaced by concrete, and thousands of houses being built omitting heat, no wonder the climate has changed.

[piglet]

4 minutes ago, TROY said:

You are so right, we had zero rainfall here in East Dene since May 8th. But A thunderstorm rolled in around midnight, which gave  some rainfall at last. 2 hours at least, until I Fell asleep at 2am. But Our climate has becoming much drier in the summer and hotter. But we seem to have a new monsoon season from late November  to March.

No such luck here.

The heavier clouds rolled in from Newhaven and that was that. I could hear the thunder. Bournemouth was lucky to get some.

I know your patch of East Sussex quite well and years ago worked with Eastbourne Water Company at Cornish Farm and Wigdens Bottom looking at nitrate levels in the chalk.

You might get your water from Arlington reservoir, but here it's borehole only.

[carinthian]

3 minutes ago, TROY said:

I Think that when you look at how much farmland has been replaced by concrete, and thousands of houses being built omitting heat, no wonder the climate has changed.

On my yearly trips back to blighty this is one thing I notice more and more of those horrible linear new housing estates popping up on once green fields and woodlands. Just to many folk  to cram in !

C

[piglet]

5 minutes ago, TROY said:

I Think that when you look at how much farmland has been replaced by concrete, and thousands of houses being built omitting heat, no wonder the climate has changed.

Eastbourne has certainly expanded as has Burgess Hill. I walked over to Ringmer yesterday, another expanding "village".

Plenty of nearby fields, but one field of maize sown just when the rain stopped, has made next to no growth and is 4" high at most. This is cattle fodder for winter months.

[carinthian]

1 minute ago, piglet said:

Eastbourne has certainly expanded as has Burgess Hill. I walked over to Ringmer yesterday, another expanding "village".

Plenty of nearby fields, but one field of maize sown just when the rain stopped, has made next to no growth and is 4" high at most. This is cattle fodder for winter months.

Aye, went back to my old stomping ground in Horsham last week and noticed on the train out from Gatwick the expansion of new building going on in the area. Soon Horsham will be connected to Crawley. Um !!

C

[Downburst]

A complicated question this. In general rainfall over all of Ireland has increased 6% since the 1961 to 1990 average. But this was largely over the west. What I think is interesting is the soil temperature, the run off and the warmer air temps day and night. There is harder ground in summer and quicker run off. There is increase evaporation and more sun shine on the ground and some rainfall totals are contributed by heavier individual showers, which can run off. So one can't induce if the ground is dryer or not simply by measuring total rainfall in a gauge.

My own experience as a keen gardener all my life who knows the ground in my garden very well. Since 2012 I have had a major increase in grass browning and harder ground from April to September. I have had changes in insect types, fungus types, (some attacking clover int he lawn now due to wet winter weather perhaps and then parched late spring to date weaking the plants). All in all lots of changes in what will and will not grow. 

 

Intense rain days are increasing in the west here, (Valentia County Kerry) but insignificant signal in the east (Phoenix Park). Days >20mm rainfall. This is interesting with respect to more heat energy.

[ANYWEATHER]

2 hours ago, sunny_vale said:

That's a bit of a distortion of the truth. You're correct in saying that the Earth's climate changes in cycles. This is over thousands of years though, not such extreme shifts within decades as currently being experienced.

That’s your interpretation 

[sunny_vale]

Just now, ANYWEATHER said:

That’s your interpretation 

Definitely science.