Friday, July 20, 2007

What a difference a year makes.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year advocates of Global Warming were cooing with delight as temperatures in Britain topped the high 30’s centigrade, and actually bested some of the more popular resorts of the Mediterranean.

However fast forward a year and what do we find. We find one of the most miserable summer periods for quite some time with regions of Britain again subject to flooding, torrential rain, and very average, if not below average temperatures. But of course if this wasn’t Global Warming then it just had to be Climate Change. Presumably those highly active, but not entirely consistent concentrations of carbon dioxide must have conspired to make this an entirely forgettable British summer.

As ever - and as this site so brilliantly illustrates the answer was much more prosaic. In fact simply a matter of wind direction.

As the pic below illustrates, the British isles were subject to a swirling wind pattern of the sort that only last month deluged areas of England, and particularly the city of Sheffield with particularly heavy downpours. (see here for a link to the entry of that period and also one of the nicer pics of Paris Hilton)

Swirling weather systems of this sort can stay active above a region for a prolonged period, at least long enough to result in widespread flooding or otherwise miserable conditions. Either way there was no evidence of any swirling clouds of carbon dioxide, and even the staunchest advocate of Global Warming was left facing the unpalatable possibility that perhaps their equations were in need of urgent revision as the British summer stubbornly refused to be anything but ordinary.