2019-2020 appears to be likely to become another non-winter winter with little snow and high temperatures. But good weather comes at an awful price.
The Ambivalence of a Nice Day in February
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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My thoughts, exactly, Ted. While we aren’t quite enjoying tropical weather here in Stockholm, almost no snow has fallen this season, which has pleased me as a year-round cyclist. But when I think of what anomalies like this indicate for what is happening to the global climate, I shudder….
Henri
The birds in the drawing make me think: it seems highly unlikely that amounts of daylight vs. temperature are not interconnected in subtle ways to biological drives in animals (heat and light being the two major sources of energy). That is, when it gets warmer but without “enough” hours of daylight, it will trigger earlier emergences of some things, but not others. The imbalance will affect the populations of insects and the animals that depend on them (mostly birds, but bats and other insects as well).
Rachel Carson wrote of the Silent Spring from pesticides. We may have stumbled upon the “green”house solution to all those pesky songbirds.
A nice string of 80 degree high temperature days in 2012, from the NWS.
Chicago is not known for its balmy late astronomical winters.
14 81/2012
15 81/2012
16 82/2012
17 82/2012
18 81/2012
19 78/2012
20 85/2012
21 87/2012
22 83/2012
If not for the 78 on the 19th there would have been 9 consecutive eighty degree days in a row. Will have to settle for 3 and 5 days in a row averaging over 82 degrees.
Michael Moore made a similar observation on his podcast but it took about 20 minutes. 🙂