UKC

Dry, hot summers could become 'norm' in Scotland

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 planetmarshall 03 Feb 2020

From the BBC - "Dry, hot summers could become 'norm' in Scotland"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51347881

This from Academia and the Met Office rather than the Daily Express - so could the price we pay for a possible decline in Scottish Winter conditions, be a golden age for high mountain Trad?

 Kemics 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

Imagine if it's so dry all the midges die, it could become paradise. 

 henwardian 03 Feb 2020
In reply to Kemics:

> Imagine if it's so dry all the midges die, it could become paradise. 

There's more chance of someone cutting of Scotland at the base and floating it round to the west coast of Spain on a raft.

 AlanLittle 03 Feb 2020
In reply to henwardian:

Spain wouldn't want a free & independent Scotland anywhere in the vicintiy giving the Catalans ideas.

Rigid Raider 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

Woohoo... I remember family camping holidays in July and August as warm, sticky and often wet with frequent blitzes by the Caledonian Luftwaffe. So with 17.5 hours of daylight in June and the prospect of wee Krankie taking Scotland back into the EU our move there this summer looks well-timed. Doubles all round!

Post edited at 10:53
 jimtitt 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

Or the gulf stream collapses and you´ll freeze your asses off! Read whichever report you like and pick the possibility you prefer.

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 girlymonkey 03 Feb 2020
In reply to Kemics:

The hot dry summers we have had have indeed had fewer midges, but far more clegs! Not sure which is worse. Clegs bite through summer weight clothes and are sorer bites, but at least you can see them coming and get a chance to splat them!

 girlymonkey 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

So far, I would say our experience of the global warming which is currently happening doesn't seem to bear this out. There is often a dry and warm spell in May, but this has long been the case. Summer in general doesn't currently seem to be going that way!

In reply to jimtitt:

> Or the gulf stream collapses and you´ll freeze your asses off! Read whichever report you like and pick the possibility you prefer.

Only if you consider those outcomes to have equal probability, and you subscribe to the notion that changes in the gulf stream would have a major impact on the Northern European climate. This article disputes the latter idea, and argues that any cooling tendency would be overwhelmed by warming due to increase in greenhouse gases.

http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/

 Trevers 03 Feb 2020
In reply to jimtitt:

> Or the gulf stream collapses and you´ll freeze your asses off! Read whichever report you like and pick the possibility you prefer.

Although it would turn Scotland into a true winter paradise, I think it's still a few centuries off:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601666

 Sam W 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

Reading Nan Shepherd's book The Living Mountain last night, about the Cairngorms and was struck by this sentence 'snow, that hardly ever fails to powder the plateau about the third week of September'.

That was written in 1944, and a quick check of snowfall records from the past 10 years shows that snow in September is now unusual, rather than expected.  Long hot summers seem a long way off, but the path towards them has begun.

Highly recommend a read, it's a lovely book about the mountains and nature.

In reply to planetmarshall:

> From the BBC - "Dry, hot summers could become 'norm' in Scotland"

Obviously predicted by people who couldn't organise a balloon-bursting competition in a pin factory.

The real World is somewhat different.

DC

14
In reply to Trevers:

As above, Seager argues that it's atmospheric and not oceanic heat transport that is responsible for mild winters in Norther Europe - although I'm not a climate scientist so I don't know what the prevailing consensus is these days.

In reply to Dave Cumberland:

> Obviously predicted by people who couldn't organise a balloon-bursting competition in a pin factory.

> The real World is somewhat different.

> DC

What, the Met Office? I think to be fair they do have some expertise in this area. What's yours?

1
 Robert Durran 03 Feb 2020
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

> Obviously predicted by people who couldn't organise a balloon-bursting competition in a pin factory.

Two top universities and the met office?

Care to elaborate?

1
 jimtitt 03 Feb 2020
In reply to Trevers:

Like I wrote, pick the report that justifies your opinion. The same goes for the timescale

 Mark Bull 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

Certain amount of misreporting/oversimplification going on here - the referenced report talks about summer heatwaves like 2018 becoming more common than in the past, not "the norm", and focuses solely on temperature and not rainfall (Summer 2018 was a bit drier than average in Scotland, but not really exceptional). 

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In reply to Mark Bull:

> Summer 2018 was a bit drier than average in Scotland, but not really exceptional. 

I suppose it would depend on how you quantify those terms - but from the Met Office's stats for Summer that year, most of Scotland (except for the west and south-east) had rainfall about 50-90% of the 1961-1990 average, which for an entire season I'd say was fairly exceptional.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-a...

 peppermill 03 Feb 2020
In reply to girlymonkey:

Quite. Bites from these little feckers have a nasty habit of still spreading 3 days later and involving a course of antibiotics. 

 Mark Bull 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

If you look at the time series here https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-... it seems that for Scotland as a whole, it was only the 10th driest summer since 1980. The trend over the last 30 years is for wetter summers, not drier ones. 

Post edited at 16:12
 Michael Gordon 03 Feb 2020
In reply to planetmarshall:

I'm sure they've also said at times that future summers will be warm and wet!

 overdrawnboy 03 Feb 2020
In reply to Kemic

> Imagine if it's so dry all the midges die, it could become paradise. 

The midges will be replaced with flying pigs.


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