Jonathan Jeppsson
Dig manager and climate columnist
This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.
Published 22.08
Summer one day – biting cold the next.
The weather phenomenon we are now witnessing – violent swings between heat and cold – may be a consequence of climate change.
The “flickering” between hot and cold, between wet and dry, has become increasingly common since the 1960s.
There is a high risk that it will get worse.
Spring 2021 was a disaster for French winegrowers.
A sudden cold snap in April, the worst in decades, wreaked havoc across the country’s wine regions.
Production in Champagne fell by 36 percent after frost was followed by heavy rain. In the Burgundy-Beaujolais region, hailstorms helped halve production.
Farmers were unprepared — the cold snap came after a period of very mild weather. “It wasn’t normal cold, it was polar cold — much more intense than usual,” said winegrower Michel-Henri Ratte.
Early spring warmth that makes plants bloom — only to be followed by a cold snap that freezes the buds to ice: Climate experts say “false springs” are at risk of becoming more common in the wake of climate change.
These types of rapid temperature changes have become both more common and more intense in recent decades, according to a new study.
The researchers analyzed temperature data from 1961 to 2023 to identify weather events where temperatures “flipped” rapidly from cold to warm or vice versa within five days. In more than 60 percent of the regions studied worldwide, these rapid shifts had increased in frequency.
The sudden temperature swings are becoming more frequent, stronger, and faster.
Another exemple of the flicker is what is commonly called ”climate whiplash”, a sudden reversal between extremely wet and dry conditions, which contributed to the catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, for example. In recent years, such swings have been linked to devastating floods in East Africa, Pakistan, and Australia. A new analysis may show how this phenomenon is increasing exponentially around the world due to global warming.
If we reach three degrees of warming by the end of the century, which many estimates point to, the occurrence of this type of weather event will have doubled.
For those who know their comic book literature from the past, it is as if we will be living in the Smurfs' weather machine - it is a machine that can induce weather, but which, when the Smurfs start arguing about what kind of weather should prevail, breaks down and starts to throw itself between different weather conditions in minute intervals.
It is biting cold and snow one moment, summer heat the next.
It is pouring rain one second and dry the next.
Scientists predict that the trend of more and more temperature changes will continue to increase as global warming increases. Ecosystems will be subjected to increasingly tough tests when the temperature swings from hot to cold or vice versa, as will our infrastructure.
What should have stayed in a comic book is about to become a reality.
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