Above, shocking report on weather conditions and impacts on Agriculture in the UK.
Temperatures are set to soar this week across large swaths of Europe, offering little respite from heat waves that have battered the continent in quick succession this summer. Forecasters have warned that the relentless heat, combined with persistently dry conditions, could worsen the already severe threat of wildfires.
It is the fifth heat wave to hit Europe since May, with a high pressure system known as a heat dome intensifying across the continent. The extreme heat has fueled a string of dangerous wildfires, dried rivers and sent residents flocking to cooler spots as scientists warn that Europe is warming faster than any other continent.
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Excerpting a longer article here which describes several factors that make Europe more prone to faster warming and recurrent heat and drought.
Especially interesting that a melting Greenland is causing changes in the North Atlantic that appear to be bending the jet stream in a way that favors heat spells.
The most foundational reason Europe outpaces the global average is geographic and physical. The global mean temperature is calculated across both ocean and land surfaces, and water is a powerful heat sink — absorbing energy to depth, releasing it slowly through evaporation, and thermally buffering the land masses it surrounds. Because roughly 71% of Earth’s surface is ocean, the global average is heavily weighted toward surfaces that warm more slowly than land under equivalent greenhouse gas forcing. Land warms approximately 1.5 to 2 times faster than the ocean surface under the same forcing, because soil and rock cannot store heat to depth and cannot cool themselves through continuous evaporation the way open water can.
Continue reading “As Europe Goes Under another Heat Dome, Spectre of Food Rationing in UK”
