Meteorologists report weather – they don’t make it!

Meteorologists are being threatened and abused for forecasting and reporting record high temperatures and weather extremes.

Last week Spain recorded the highest April temperature on record (38.8 °C) following on from last year, 2022, its hottest year since records began.

Nearly 75 percent of Spain is susceptible to desertification due to climate change. Water reservoirs are at half their capacity and farmers unions say 60 percent of agricultural land is “suffocating” from lack of rain. Spain has asked Brussels to help by activating the EU’s agriculture crisis reserve funds (when many other areas of Europe are also suffering from drought).

Long drowned villages emerging from bottoms of desiccating reservoirs: The ruins of the Sant Romà church, exposed due to historically low water levels in the Sau reservoir, Spain in April. Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

AFP – Agence France Presse – 05/05/2023, Barron’s

Insults, Threats Target Spain Forecasters Over Climate ‘Conspiracy’

Spain’s government on Friday came to the defence of the AEMET weather agency, which has suffered threats and abuse from climate conspiracy theorists over its forecasts during a record drought.

“Murderers”, “Criminals”, “You’ll pay for this” and “We’re watching you” are just some of the anonymous messages sent to AEMET in recent weeks on social media, by email and even by phone.

The threats were responding to forecasts and reports published by AEMET, notably over last week’s early heatwave, when Spain registered its hottest-ever temperature for April, reaching 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Cordoba.

Read the complete article…

Drought → crop failures → famine?

Where the European/Mediterranean region is concerned, Spain is not the only country facing water crises. Even before the end of winter, the Guardian’s article of 4 March, ‘Very precarious’: Europe faces growing water crisis as winter drought worsens, Austria, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland were all suffering problems from shortages of rain and runoff from the small amount of accumulated winter snow.

Australia has already lost a lot of agricultural productivity because of three years of La Niña flooding. For several months we couldn’t even buy frozen french fries (shades of the Irish Potato Famine). This may well be followed by even more damaging droughts when the next major El Niño surpasses the last two to reach 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, as seems likely given past trends.

As a target for those with an often visceral distrust of the established science of human-caused global heating, the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature record might be seen as ground zero. Photograph: Bill Bachman/Alamy / from the article.

Graham Readfearn – 7/05/2023, The Guardian

Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment

Former Bureau of Meteorology staff say claims they deliberately manipulated data to make warming seem worse are being fed by a ‘fever swamp’ of climate denial.

For more than a decade, climate science deniers, rightwing politicians and sections of the Murdoch media have waged a campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature records.

Those records say Australia has warmed by 1.4C since 1910, the year when the bureau’s main quality-controlled climate dataset starts.

Extremely hot days come along more often than they used to, and the warming trends are happening everywhere, at all times of the year.

As a target for those with an often visceral distrust of the established science of human-caused global heating, the bureau’s temperature record might be seen as ground zero.

“This has frankly been a concerted campaign,” says climate scientist Dr Ailie Gallant, of Monash University. “But this is not about genuine scepticism. It is harassment and blatant misinformation that has been perpetuated.”

Read the complete article….

Attacking messengers because you dislike or fear the messages only impedes circulating knowledge that might help to solve real-world problems and save your life or the lives of your family members. That global warming causes record temperatures and droughts is a fact that causes problems…. Denying the fact does not make the problems go away! It only keeps the problem from being solved until it is too late to do anything effective.

When there are too many crop failures over too wide an area for too long, famine is the consequence, and can lead to. Continuing famine leads to starvation and, eventually, mass deaths.


Featured Image:

Situation of Combined Drought Indicator in Europe – 2nd ten-day period of April 2023 from Copernicus’s EDO – European Drought Observatory

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

More Europeans vote climate if exposed to extremes

Voters across Europe with personal experience of climate extremes are more likely to vote for Green parties.

by Roman Hoffmann, 07/02/2022 in Eureka Alert
Experience of climate extremes increase Green voting in Europe: What role do experiences with climate change and extreme events play in shaping environmental attitudes and to what extent can they explain the recent rise in environmental concerns and willingness to vote for Green parties across Europe? IIASA researchers set out to investigate these and related issues in a new study just published in Nature Climate Change.

For draft of full article in Nature Climate Change, see preprint in Research Square

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

The EU’s satellite monitoring program is tracking the accelerating frequency and intensity of wildfires around the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world

by Adam Gristwood, 03/02/2022 – in EUMETSAT Science Blog
Southern Europe battles increases in major wildfires: As climate change drives longer heatwaves, experts say that strategies to prevent and suppress wildfires are increasingly important

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.