Climate vs. weather

Rain, incessant rain, day after day. The will to do, to go out and conquer the world, is mightily subdued right now. For the third day in a row, I'm not going for a walk - no fun getting soaked, and the fields have turned to mud. At the same time, my motivation to exercise has dampened; I'm doing three sets rather than ten, my drive to write is similarly weak. 

The day's length is precisely governed by the progress of our planet, tilted at 23 degrees from vertical, around our sun. So while I know that 16 April 2022 will be 13 hours, 58 minutes and 35 seconds long (between sunrise and sunset in Warsaw), I have no idea what the weather will be like this time next year.

I do know that this time last year, April was glorious. Day after day of clear blue skies. Already by 8 April - a week and a day earlier than today - our fruit trees in Jeziorki were in blossom. Today, as I look out over the garden - no sign of any blossom. And tomorrow promises more rain, reaching a climax around lunchtime with off-the-scale rainfall forecast.

But, as my old mother used to say to me when I was small, "If you want flowers, you must have showers" (probably a miss-hearing of lyrics from Pennies from Heaven). Indeed. Gorgeous as last April was - the month was spent in almost total lockdown (daily walks excepted). My Google Maps timeline for the April 2020 shows but three highlights - 'Afternoon at Lidl, April 3', 'Afternoon at Lidl, April 7' and 'Saturday Afternoon at Lidl, April 18'. 

And it was bone-dry last year. The southern pond in Jeziorki shrank at an alarming pace; by late August you could see soil all the way across (though it was still too soggy to traverse on foot). This winter's snow cover was sorely needed, and a top-up of rain too. One result of the extra wetness is the return to Jeziorki of more species of bird life, including (I've heard it several times this spring but not seen it), the bittern (in Polish, bąk - the same word as the Polish for 'bumblebee'). Its characteristic low-frequency 'booming' sound - like blowing over the top of a very large bottle - is unmistakable. It's been several years since I last heard it round these parts.

Once upon a time, weather was something that just happened; weather forecasting reached the general population as mass-circulation newspapers began arriving on the doorsteps of the land and radios were switched on. Generally hit or miss, they'd be accurate for no more than a few hours. These days we have supercomputers calculating the paths of weather fronts - indeed, of individual cloud formations - and producing forecasts that are very accurate for three or four days ahead (less so in summer with convection effects off the land producing erratic cloud build-ups). Looking at our computer screens, we either see row upon row of cloud moving in, bringing rain and blotting out the sun, or a clear, cloudless sky - or, more typically, something in between. We might not be able to affect the weather any more than our ancestors were, but we are far more aware of what the next few days will bring.

While I'm highly concerned about the effects of man-made climate change on the macro scale, when it comes to weather, I prefer cloudless days. The fact that the climate is changing at an uneven rate is visible at times like this. Dense clouds bringing cool, wet weather rather than the bright, warm days of April 2020, do bring hope. Maybe the slide into a runaway, unstoppable climate change that would be a disaster for much of life on earth, is more gentle than thought. Maybe there's still time to alter our habits and launch a thoroughgoing green transformation of our industry, our transportation, our energy generation. Maybe it takes a pandemic to affect such behavioural change.

Apropos the pandemic, the Polish third wave is beginning to subside, though at a far slower pace than seen in the UK. A more effective vaccine roll-out and stricter lockdown (at least on paper) in the UK has meant the tide began to turn in late January, and now, infection rates and death rates per million are 22 times and 32 times higher respectively in Poland. But still, it's clear that Poland has also turned the corner, albeit nearly three months behind the UK. A year ago, the situation in the UK was far worse than in Poland, with one person out of every six confirmed infected with Covid dying of it in mid-April. In Poland, it was one in every 15. (Today in Poland it's one in 36, in the UK, one in 52. Huge difference. (Source: Johns Hopkins University CSSE Covid-19 Data, from Our World in Data.org.).

Meanwhile, my dream diary continues; dreams ordinary and extraordinary are noted down each night. Last night I dreamt of alien abduction!

I hope for some sunshine on Sunday. We need it.

This time last year:
Seven lockdown sunsets

This time four years ago:
Easter everywhere

This time 11 years ago:
Strange days indeed (though less strange than these!)

[link to video of the blog post, courtesy of Nick Morris]