The meteorological year is 21 weeks old. Enough time for a comparison to be made with last year’s temperature data from my Ten Stations.

Five stations in each hemisphere is a tiny sample of the total number reporting, so they are in no way representative of the whole world’s temperature experience. They do, however, combine to tell a story that can question the official climate change narrative.

The northern hemisphere is considerably warmer than it should be relative to the Pre-Industrial baseline. At the end of November 2019, the 5 Stations averaged 1.24°C above P-I. The chart below shows the marked difference this year.

The relative warmth peaked in Week 16 at 127.46 IPCC units. This is massive when you consider the IPCC has projected a single unit rise annually until 2040 sees the Paris Accord’s 1.5°C above P-I reached – if humans fail to tackle the “climate emergency” successfully.

127.46 IPCC units equate to 3.84°C above P-I. The steep decline in five weeks is as welcome as it is surprising, given that reduced industrial activity and transport was expected by some to raise land surface temperatures.

The picture in the southern hemisphere is very different.

Ending last year within a smidgen of 1.5°C above P-I, the south has effectively cooled by almost a degree. It would require a drop of another 23 IPCC units to make the southern hemisphere fall below the Pre-Industrial Baseline, but Rio de Janeiro has done that and Cape Town is currently just 0.04°C above P-I.

Despite the recent relative temperature decline in the north and the seeming stasis in the south the linear trends to the end of the year are up in the north and down in the south, suggesting the North-South divide will be maintained.

 

From the beginning of Week 6 to the middle of Week 18 the 10 Station “mini Globe” had maintained a temperature over 2°C above P-I. The trend from now to the end of the year is upwards, though it is possible that the cold times are coming.

Flower 15 · Mother-dee

My breakfast reading is currently Man and the Natural World (Keith Thomas) and discovering that Red Campion (Silene dioica­) has this disturbing vernacular name sent me along Church Walk this morning. Of little use as a food or medicine, this flower was thought, once upon a time, to kill the parents of any child who picked it. “Popular knowledge” in the Middle Ages bestowed a lot of other names upon it, some of them shared with other quite different flowers. Five are “Robin” names and half an hour after taking this photo I met a fine specimen of Erithacus rubecula in Martin’s Ravine.

Bird 80 · Robin

Ten minutes later I reached the Glen Gardens cliff top and was thrilled to hear a ‘northern nightingale’, one of several birds once familiarly called Peggy. (The others are whitethroat, garden warbler, willow warbler and chiffchaff.) The lovely song was coming from a distant tree, the sea beyond.

Bird 81 · Blackcap

Linneans chose to call “her” Sylvia atricapilla.

Fifteen more minutes and I was back in prison.