Now I don't know where you'll be when (if) reading this, but as it's the 'World Wide Web' it could be anywhere I suppose, (with a few notable exceptions, North Korea, China etc) and I wonder if you've noticed, the same as me, how the world weather seems to be a bit out of sync with the seasons in the last 20-25 years?
It used to be, when I was a kid, that winter was cold, spring was an improvement over winter, gradually warming and summer was hot, fading slowly into autumn (or fall) and then back to winter. This was the UK of my youth, and probably roughly equated, with regional differences, with your country.
Although my country has now changed, I've been living in Cyprus these past nine years, the weather patterns seem to have changed dramatically. Even here in the middle east as we are it's noticeable how the winter starts later, and therefore ends later, and there seems no gentle few weeks long transition as there was. It's winter one day with temperatures of max 17c, and two days later, we're in 30c sunshine, which peaks in August in the mid-to-high 40's.
Now I'm sure there must be some long detailed scientific explanation for that, but I'm sure 'Global Warming' ain't it! If global warming was all it's cracked up to be, wouldn't we have less rain and cold than we had before. Just a few weeks ago, towards the end of April my mother-in-law was speaking to my wife on the phone, and complaining that it was snowing! In south east England! in April! unheard of... until now. Easter weekends of my childhood were picnic days in the countryside, balmy warmish days, you could even swim in the sea at Easter, the water was warm enough.
Now we are lucky here in Cyprus, one of the reasons we moved here was the weather and, having got over the initial shock of the warm coming so quickly this year, we know with some certainty that it will last till around the end of November, and we have even spent Christmas day on our balcony in years past. That was until I checked the weather forecast , and they (local met office) reckon we could see an 8 degree drop in temperatures and thunderstorms over the next ten days. Most unusual!
I get to see the BBC world service at work, and see that weather patterns all over are changing and even they say, on numerous occasions, that this weather pattern is 'unusual for the time of year' or that pattern is later/ earlier than usual. Even the Gulf Stream is misbehaving, and is flowing too far north as it reaches Europe, apparently.
What can we do about it? Well nothing of course, its Nature at its best, keeping us on our toes.
Teaching us a lesson, some would say, for all the abuse we've given since... well the industrial revolution I suppose, since the countries in Europe (notably the UK, Spain and France) decided to expand their territories into the 'new world' which was, incidentally, doing very well without us, thank you very much, since we started to cut down the worlds trees, since we began pumping billions of litres of various gasses into the atmosphere because of new industrial processes?
Who knows?
It used to be, when I was a kid, that winter was cold, spring was an improvement over winter, gradually warming and summer was hot, fading slowly into autumn (or fall) and then back to winter. This was the UK of my youth, and probably roughly equated, with regional differences, with your country.
Although my country has now changed, I've been living in Cyprus these past nine years, the weather patterns seem to have changed dramatically. Even here in the middle east as we are it's noticeable how the winter starts later, and therefore ends later, and there seems no gentle few weeks long transition as there was. It's winter one day with temperatures of max 17c, and two days later, we're in 30c sunshine, which peaks in August in the mid-to-high 40's.
Now I'm sure there must be some long detailed scientific explanation for that, but I'm sure 'Global Warming' ain't it! If global warming was all it's cracked up to be, wouldn't we have less rain and cold than we had before. Just a few weeks ago, towards the end of April my mother-in-law was speaking to my wife on the phone, and complaining that it was snowing! In south east England! in April! unheard of... until now. Easter weekends of my childhood were picnic days in the countryside, balmy warmish days, you could even swim in the sea at Easter, the water was warm enough.
Now we are lucky here in Cyprus, one of the reasons we moved here was the weather and, having got over the initial shock of the warm coming so quickly this year, we know with some certainty that it will last till around the end of November, and we have even spent Christmas day on our balcony in years past. That was until I checked the weather forecast , and they (local met office) reckon we could see an 8 degree drop in temperatures and thunderstorms over the next ten days. Most unusual!
I get to see the BBC world service at work, and see that weather patterns all over are changing and even they say, on numerous occasions, that this weather pattern is 'unusual for the time of year' or that pattern is later/ earlier than usual. Even the Gulf Stream is misbehaving, and is flowing too far north as it reaches Europe, apparently.
What can we do about it? Well nothing of course, its Nature at its best, keeping us on our toes.
Teaching us a lesson, some would say, for all the abuse we've given since... well the industrial revolution I suppose, since the countries in Europe (notably the UK, Spain and France) decided to expand their territories into the 'new world' which was, incidentally, doing very well without us, thank you very much, since we started to cut down the worlds trees, since we began pumping billions of litres of various gasses into the atmosphere because of new industrial processes?
Who knows?
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