 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 
|
Perhaps the greatest change is in the summer months. Your grandparents griped about the typical 'three hot days and a thunderstorm' which constituted a summer back when they were young. Three hot days every week over a number of consecutive weeks is closer to the norm now. Average temperatures are some 5°C hotter during the summer of the 2080s compared to the 1980s. During the last two weeks in August, daytime temperatures in central London rarely fall below 30°C – Graves End peaks at 42°C. The nights can be pretty unbearable at times. Global warming has resulted in a considerable increase in night-time temperatures and the humidity of the atmosphere (the amount of water vapour the air holds) has increased, resulting in the summer nights becoming more sticky and oppressive. Around the rest of southern England and the Midlands, temperatures are the sort your parents used to travel to the South of France to enjoy. The coasts of Devon and Cornwall have truly become the English Riviera, with a lot of sunny days. As water temperatures have risen, swimming in the Channel has become more bearable. However, the rise in ocean temperatures is having a detrimental consequence. Along the Norfolk, Suffolk and Sussex coasts there's an ongoing battle between the land and ocean, and the ocean is winning. Like any object when heated, the oceans have expanded. This expansion, combined with the melting of Greenland and Arctic ice, has caused a sea level rise of over half a metre. What were once desirable coastal properties are now only lapped up by an ever encroaching ocean.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
Based on the outcome of the high emissions scenario from the Hadley climate models, here is a sample of the weather that we might experience in summer 2080. The modelers call the high emissions scenario the 'business as normal' scenario. In other words, this is what the weather will be like if we make no effort to curb our effect on global warming.
