We need to talk about the weather and the potential for extreme heat - RED WARNING issued

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

So we need to talk weather and climate.

You might have seen some lurid headlines about extreme temperatures in 10 days time. These are based on some of the ensemble members of the GFS model runs.

GFS is one weather model. It runs 4 times a day. Each run consists of several parallel versions running with slightly different starting conditions (perturbations).

For several days now some of these have been showing widespread temperatures of 41C. We've never seen temperatures modelled above 40C for the UK before. The UK record for the actual temperature is 38.7c .

A big big however though! Most of the ensemble members are showing temperatures rather lower than this - low to mid 30's c. so at the moment these extreme temperatures remain unlikely. Not impossible though.

From a climate point of view, we have, in my opinion reached a tipping point where such extremes are now theoretically possible in our local climate. This is extremely alarming. I know the world and our country are full of alarming issues, this is one of them.

I'll keep this thread updated over the next few days.

Thread title edited by MNHQ on OP's request

Yes exactly. Seems a large number of people would like to keep their heads in the sand and ignore the climate crisis, whereas we need everyone to be thinking about it, taking action and letting the government know it's top of the priority list!

Neighbours using the sprinkler again this eve. Thats 7 days in a row. They've got lovely grass 🙄

TBF With water companies allowing 1 litre in 5 leaking away, your neighbours aren't the problem.

We have a 20% leakage rate, EU average is half that and use less per capita.

@AndreaC74 just because water is wasted through leakage doesn't make it ok to waste even more through unnecessary lawn watering. Water that leaks from pipes stays underground and ends up back in the water table fairly quickly. Water sprayed on lawns evaporates into dry air and helps nothing.

...and also into rivers and the sea.

I'm not defending watering a lawn, my garden looks like a dust bowl but the leaks are extremely wasteful, 20% leakage rate is terrible and often cuts people off and damages roads.

It also has the effect of making people ignore the conserve water msg.