On Fri, 13 Dec 2019 15:49:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I fly model aircraft too.
> The weather here hasn't changed one iota.
> In 50 years.
>
To be fair, I didn't notice a lot going on when I was a modeller, but
then I sort of followed Andy Crisp's approach; "there's no point in
looking at the weather because when you get to the contest its the same
for everybody", though I did notice slowly increasing temperatures in
France and progressively wetter summers in the UK over the period from
the early '70s until around 2003.

However, gliding is rather more weather-dependant because if the weather
isn't good enough to stay up for several hours and isn't likely to be
soarable over a fairly area you don't even think about attempting that
300km cross-country task. As a result I now take a lot more interest in
forecasts and actuals than I ever did when I flew models competitively
and, since I now log all glider flights along with notes about them, its
easy to check back and see what I did and when. As I said previously
there is now a lack of the steady cold Northerlies with bright sun on the
ground that we used to get in the mid-April to mid-May period during the
noughties. These were excellent for long flights up the east coast. Thats
also when the jetstream used to come south as far the UK in winter and be
well north of us in summer. Now its over the UK in summer and way down
over Spain and the south of France in winter. Right now the forecasts
show the jet stream crossing France and extending down across the
Mediterranean into Libya before swinging back north across Egypt.

FWIW, all global climate models from the earliest useful ones to the
present have consistently predicted that the mid -lattitudes, i.e. us,
would get wetter and we're certainly seeing that now.

> It did get a bit warmer betweem 1970 amd 1990, but it stoped and has got
> no warmer and maybe a little cooler.
>
2003 was way warmer than any summer I remember In France through the '80s
and '90s. For a good graphical representation of what the global climate
has done over the last 20,000 years, look at this:
https://xkcd.com/1732/

> jet streams have cycles
>
Indeed, but the Northern jety stream  didn't used to go nearly as far
south over Europe as it is at present.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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