We're going to have to change the calendar . . .

 . . . because plants in the UK are now flowering a full month earlier than before human-caused global heating.

You can find the details of the Cambridge study, which used records from 1793 to 2019 to track the flowering dates of 406 kinds of plants throughout the UK, here.

                                              Spring flowers are showing up a month too soon

Credit: UKgardenpbotos

Hmmm. Could it be that this climate change thing that we've been hearing about is real?

REA 2/3/22

A SPOT OF GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS FROM THE UK

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced this week that the UK will ban the sale of all gas- or diesel-burning cars by 2035--5 years earlier than previously planned, and just 15 years from now.

UK going green

Credit: NRMA

It's a bold goal, but, as critics point out, implementation will require major improvements in the UK's power generation and distribution system, as well as specific rules and regulations to encourage what remains a huge transition.

Still, supporters explain, every step towards this impressive target will provide significant environmental and health benefits.

We need all the good news we can find, environmental or otherwise, so kudos to Boris and the UK.

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REA

TRUMP'S MASTERSTROKE

Today’s headlines (NYT August 25) about President’s Trump’s ‘fantastic’ new trade pact with Boris Johnson reveals what last week’s flap about Trump’s effort to ‘purchase’ Greenland may have really been about:  It was, in fact, a brilliantly conceived deception for the truly historic action being negotiated behind the scenes for the purchase of post-Brexit England!

We all fell for the ‘fake news’, as expected, since nothing the President tweets or demands from day to day is beyond belief. The advantages of a fire-sale rescue of Great Britain just as its economic value reaches rock-bottom after a likely ‘no deal’ exit from the EU could not have escaped the calculating mind of our Deal-maker-in-chief. Imagine--‘Fortress Americans’ and ‘Little Englanders’ together again, reuniting their Anglo-Saxon heritage. Such a deal!

Les Adler

ARCTIC WARMING --> MEANDERING JET STREAM --> MISERABLE WINTERS IN US AND UK

If you live in the eastern US or in the UK, you've suffered through some of the coldest winters in recent history during the last decade.

North American cold wave November 4-23, 2014

Credit: Wikipedia

An international team of climate researchers from a variety of disciplines has now concluded that those extremely cold winters were the product of natural variability made worse by Arctic warming and ice melt.

Writing in the prestigious journal Nature Climate Change, the authors conclude that a reduced temperature gradient caused by more rapid warming at high latitudes has contributed to a slowed jet stream that meanders farther north and south, and takes longer to shift from one location to another. 

Global air temperature anomalies, January 2016
from Overland, et al., "Nonlinear response of mid-latitude weather to the changing Arctic"

When an extreme dip to the south stalls over a particular region--most recently the UK and the eastern US--arctic air can pour down and stay.

"We've always had years with wavy and not so wavy jet stream winds," says Edward Hanna, a professor of climate change at the University of Sheffield, in the UK, "but in the last one to two decades the warming Arctic could well have  been amplifying the effects of the wavy patterns."

That extra-wobbly jet stream is likely to continue or even grow worse as still-increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 warm the far north and melt more ice. However, the unlucky regions that serve as parking garages for prolonged blasts of Arctic air can vary from year to year. Hanna and his colleagues hope to use what they've learned to sharpen up forecasts of future extra-bitter winters.

“This would be hugely beneficial for communities, businesses, and entire economies in the northern hemisphere," says Hanna. "The public could better prepare for severe winter weather and have access to extra crucial information that could help make live-saving and cost-saving decisions.”