Understandably, the recent editorial had a local focus pertaining to the heatwave. However, expanding the local weather pattern to a changing climate, which is a global concept, is quite a stretch.
Before showing weather patterns from other areas of the world, let’s review Australia’s recent experiences. Areas of that country also went through a dry year, with unusual heat, and suffered too many forest fires. Now, however, the weather pattern now is much more about wet and cold.
Rare July frosts and record cold hit Minnesota, S. America corn suffers due to “unusual cold” as additional polar blasts strike Australia and New Zealand. Winter bites hard in Australia, U.S. wheat crops in serious trouble, and there are more record snow and ice mass gains posted across Greenland. South American crops headed for catastrophe as Antarctic blasts persist. Extreme cold and heavy snow to cover South Africa, capping the year without a summer. The UK endured its coldest April since 1922, and one of its coldest months of May in its 362-year weather record.
The global average temperature has dropped since the start of 2016. Looking ahead, the cooling trend is predicted to accelerate into 2022, augmented with further cooling by a La Nina event that is part of the fall weather pattern forecast.
As noted by astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: With the sun now into a grand solar minimum, its lowest energy output in two centuries, global cooling is accelerating. A “meandering” jet stream will bring wider and more sudden temperature changes. There will be more hail events, with late springs, lousy summers, short autumns, more snow in winters, and more crop failures.
Ken Lane
Saanich
