UK weather has changed in recent years?

[NaturalScone]

I know it's going to be region dependent, but I am in the far north of England and so we are no strangers to wind and rain and heavy clouds.

Over the past 3 years I have seen barely any rain, even though the years were punctuated by a few mad storms. I used to need waterproofs and umbrellas etc, but not so much these days.
Spring comes early and this last few yrs the summer has only given up close to October. Last summer was perpetually humid and hot, barely any grey sky or rain for over 5 months. It never used to be like that!!!!!!

Winter's seem much milder too, apart from the odd frost.

Most people I know simply never mention it, and you'd think Brits would be going nuts with joy at so little rain here. I just feel that our traditional seasons are becoming a thing of the past.

It has changed hasn't it? A three year mild/sunny trend for northern UK is generally unheard of. Anyone else recall the endless lockdown weather (hot!)?
We have had no April or spring showers here yet, bar one slight mist of rain last weekend for an hour in the middle of the night.

Yep, it's called climate change and it has series consequences.

im on thw south coast and we have had a good few frost's this winter far more than last

the kids have had a great easter break its been sunny and warm and dont go back till monday

Thanks for saying it… reading this thread was like being in an alternate universe where man made climate change was not known about… “it’s the strangest thing, our weather is hot and unpredictable, I can’t imagine why.”

Its obvious even to the most adamant deniers climate change is a real occurrence. Yes we all know the Earths climate has fluctuated over millions of years, but man made climate change is different due the the rate of acceleration.

Its nothing to do with off set seasons, you only have to look at photographs from 40-50 years ago. I still have photographic slides of my parents home in the Pennines when I was a child, snow drifts half way up the back door, masses and masses of snow, roads blocked as with snow so deep it went over the top of the dry stone walls. This never happens any more and certainly not in the last 15 years or so.

What we are getting is wetter and warmer winters and hotter, dry summers. Our ecosystems cannot cope with the speed of change that is the issue, take trees for instance species of trees that cannot cope with hotter dyer weather, naturally migrate with cooler weather over 100s - 1000s of years, this speed they cannot move fast enough, just as other species have evolved to emerge from hibernation and hatch when certain types of plants emerge to coincide with each other. Warmer weather are triggering these plants to emerge early before these species are ready and populations decline.

Climate isn't stable anywhere and never has been. There were maybe one or two "white Christmases" in the 70s and 80s and even they didn't involve snow across the vast majority of the UK. I also remember in the 80s getting sunburnt at Easter and the weather being better in September than it had been throughout the summer.

The northern hemisphere is overall a bit hotter than it was 100 years ago but 100 years ago the northern hemisphere was emerging from a mini ice age. UK climate in particular is subject to lots of different influences and fluxes all over the shop.

As for wind, there are actually fewer storms now in the UK than there were 1995-2005 when all the really unusually intense el nino/la Nina stuff was going on in the Americas that we were regularly getting the tail end of. It's just we make more fuss about them now. I'm not sure why.

When I was young, in the 80s, we used to get huge icicles hanging off our back roof, we would semi regularly get snowed in to our small village, we would have really really cold winters (and this is in the south of England) but my parents (in the same house) say this hasn’t happened for years, winter is much more mild now and proper snow that you can toboggan on or make a snowman out of is almost unheard of.

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@Ozgirl75 didn't you lot get the six weeks of snow we had in both 2011 and 2012?

@BookkeeperBobby So how do you explain rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in ice show that, before about 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was roughly 280 parts per million. It began to rise slowly and crossed the 300 p.p.m. threshold around 1900. CO2 levels then accelerated as cars and electricity became big parts of modern life, recently topping 420 p.p.m.

The concentration of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. We’re now emitting carbon much faster than it was released 56 million years ago.

Perhaps It's just we make more fuss about them now. I'm not sure why. 😂

It’s as though nobody has heard of global warming.

Who's talking about greenhouse gas?

The UK climate has never been stable, same as all climates. UK winter isn't always terrifically cold but we nevertheless have had two of the coldest winters in 120 years within the last twelve years, April isn't always warm but we've had both snow and heatwaves in it during the last fifteen years, the UK isn't particularly windy compared to most of the rest of the world and after a ten year blip it's become a bit less windy during the past fifteen or so years. None of this has anything to do with the broader question of global temperatures, it's just where we are on our wee island and the many systems that affect us.

@BookkeeperBobby How can you discuss the UK climate and completely ignore the issue of climate change and the affect CO2e has on this.

To Quote you "None of this has anything to do with the broader question of global temperatures, it's just where we are on our wee island and the many systems that affect us." 😂 Oh seriously I give up seriously 😆.

@BookkeeperBobby so I actually live in Australia now and my parents were also here in 2012 as I had a baby so it does seem that they missed the worst winter in a long time!

I'm on the east coast of Ireland, roses and fuchsias did not go dormant this year. That's a first for me to witness. And yes it seems like there's been much less rain here too! ...for now. I bet the heavens open as soon as I press send now...

@profilehopper because all the examples given here are not to do with global warming or are from people completely forgetting that, for example, two winters in a row within the last twelve years were the coldest on record or failing to realize it's less windy in the UK now than it was fifteen years ago.

When we do feel the effects of global warming it will mean an end to the really quite regular ups and downs of climate as it plays out in this exact spot we are in on the globe, and things will look very different, but we are not there yet. We know that we are not there yet precisely because we can see the effects of the vagaries of the gulf stream and how it interacts with both northern systems and tidal systems from the Americas. Once it goes we will know about it.

Lol @Ozgirl75 . Both 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 winters had weeks and weeks of snow starting in November and running through to January, one year at least there was snow at Easter as well. Temperatures dropped to -20 in Scotland, colder than Moscow at the time, major roads closed, schools and workplaces and public transport closed, the disruption cost us billions and there a fair few deaths. Maybe your parents were in Australia for the entirety of both winters. Or maybe they just don't remember them. Glad you don't have icicles on your window in Australia tho. 😃

@Abra1d1

It’s as though nobody has heard of global warming.

Yes this thread is pretty astonishing.

Why the snarky comments? No one on this thread is denying climate change global and yes we’re all aware of it. What an odd post. People are just sharing how they’re experiencing the changes. Not everyone is following the statistics to observe trends, they see and feel it.

What we are getting is wetter and warmer winters and hotter, dry summers

Not in Sheffield!! We’ve had some hideous snowy winters over the last few yrars( although not this year),

And not a proper hot summer since 2003

This is an interesting thread - it is scary how quickly climate is changing but then the increase in CO2 into the atmosphere is still 9x faster than the increase in CO prior to the Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55 Mya ago.

Agree with others about the rain. I haven't seen "drizzle" for ages. Its either raining loads or not at all. Previously it would have been a week of drizzle, rather than a whole week of rain in one day.

You should come to the Midlands we are currently drizzling and do so regularly

It was as though no one on the first page of this thread had ever heard of climate change....

It’s rained all night round me. We get lots of rain,

@Ohilovetorave what are you on about?!
The first page is full of posters - me included - literally describing the impacts of climate change that they are witnessing in their own localities!