Global warming ends white Christmas

A white Christmas may soon be no more than a dream in many parts of southern England because of global warming, experts warn. Friends of the Earth said the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was making snow in December less and less likely in the south west, south east, East Anglia and parts of the Midlands. And a university climate lecturer said there was a chance that a city such as Norwich might never see a white Christmas again.

"You can never say never but the likelihood is that white Christmases are going to become rarer and rarer in southern England - say south of a line drawn between the Wash and the Bristol Channel," said a spokesman for Friends of the Earth. "That is what global warming will mean. Ski resorts in some parts of Europe may also find that they have no snow. That's happening already in some parts of Scotland." The environmental campaign group spokesman was speaking as Dr Nathan Gillett, a lecturer in climate change at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, made similar predictions in an interview with his local newspaper.

"White winters are already rare in Norwich. There are less than one in 20. I think there is a chance we will never see a white Christmas again," Dr Gillett told the Norwich Evening News. "By the middle of the century I don't think we are going to have any more white Christmases because of global warming. He said: "In Norfolk milder winters mean that pests which normally got killed by the cold weather won't get killed so that could be bad news for farmers that is not the worst impact of climate change.

"In a lot of the tropics and in the Third World they won't be able to grow crops. It might mean diseases like malaria will spread, there will be a rise in sea levels and that could increase the risk of flooding."

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2026812005

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002530433_santa30.html

:cry:

...or will they all look at one another and wonder what their great grandparents were talking about...

I have almost never experienced a white Christmas in London or Oxford in any case. It tended to be white February when I was a child; and
I agree that's much rarer now.

... and sighing.

Boo-boo-boo-boo-hoo.:cry:

(Younger DUers: get your grandma to explain that one to you)

The Skin

always immensely profitable for them.

When Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol it was during a run of unusually mild and wet winters in the Victorian period. I am not sure how much credence I would give to a climate forecaster stating that a given weather phenomenon is unlikely ever to occur below the line of the Wash and the Bristol channel. These are chaotic systems and people who try to make that sort of prediction often end up looking like mugs when events overtake them. I wish Friends of the Earth and others would stop trying to tie global warming to particular weather events and concentrate instead on trends in mean temperatures, precipitation, wind speeds etc. There is a real danger that incorrect predictions about day to day weather could cause people to dismiss the very real threat of climate change. For the record, the Met Office have actually issued an amber alert for a colder than average winter this year

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2005/pr20050926.html

Anyone who wants to know more about the British weather could do worse than read Gordon Manley's magisterial 'Climate and the British Scene'. Although it is over forty years old this book still gives the best introduction to the subject to the laymen. Sadly, it is out of print but there are plenty of old copies available for purchase on the Internet.