Climate change has become big news and it has undoubtedly become politicized and monetized. There are detractors and supporters, but it’s undeniable that the weather has become schizophrenic.
Let’s take a look at our localized temperature graph from our Netatmo home weather station.
One short week ago, our minimum temperature was a touch above freezing. By Friday we’d experienced the hottest day of the year (31.8C at Home Farm) and today we topped out at 18C but it felt a lot colder than that throughout the day. It was cold, cloudy, damp, windy and dark, and it felt like winter, not the middle of summer.
For me the last seven days have encapsulated climate change as phenomenon. Not too long ago, scientists were saying earth was heading towards another ice age. Now it appears that our planet is heating up at an unprecedented rate, with the prospect that certain parts of the world may yet end up getting suddenly colder.
That’s how the past seven days have felt. Last week, all the windows were open to help us stay cool and fight off heat exhaustion; today the central heating has been on all day. It’s crazy, but how utterly confused the vegetables in our veg patch must be.
I am, however, cognizant that one of the most important things to remember about climate change is that natural climate variability will still be happening all the time.
Even if the climate is forecast to be warmer in the future, periods of cold weather that occur naturally aren’t going to stop. Chances are that such cold spells will be less extreme, but a cool summer, or even a few cold years in a row is not necessarily proof that global warming isn’t happening.