Dry, and dry again

 It's hot and dry at the Croft:

All burnt and brown

The grasses have all died as have most of the flowering plants. The trees are holding out but the ground-water level is dropping, so they too will start to suffer. At 3pm today the thermometer read 35ºC and it has been like that for days. The forecast says it will stay like this for at least the next ten days, maybe longer.

For days, and for years, because this is the second summer in a row with low, low rainfall. So far this year we have had 211mm of rain (211 litres per square metre). By the end of July last year we had had 249mm, but both are more than 33% below the average for the first seven months of the year, 377mm.

 

 

 

 

We have started looking into getting water delivered, because our well is showing signs of distress. So far it's holding out, but for how long?

All of this is - of course - a precursor of the life we are going to have to lead as the climate emergency hits. Extreme temperatures - and the associated risks of forest fire - and resource shortages, starting with water.

 

Places like Montseny will be the canaries in our climate coal mine - crying out as the climate crisis strikes, warning us about the limits of growth, of consumption and of greenhouse gas emissions. 

 

Will our leaders listen? Will we, humanity, listen?

Klimate Kalendar Kaos

Climate change is causing chaos here at the Croft.

It's too warm for a normal October (we've had temperatures over 30º Centigrade) and the plants are reacting by producing flowers in what is officially the Autumn.

First, the plum tree came into flower - this picture was taken just a few days ago:

Plum tree, stoned

 Then the pear tree did the same - this picture was taken yesterday:

An ice pear?

The cycle is broken, and there will be obvious effects; my bees will be confused, and so will other pollinators that might try to hatch another brood when their predators have left for warmer climes - for example the Bee Eater, Meriops apiaster, left for Africa a few weeks ago. But there may be other, less obvious effects. As Dr. Josep Peñuelas at CREAF, Catalonia, showed in 2009, the volatile gasses emitted by the plants could feed back into a climate change loop, potentially accelerating the climate crisis.

The ants are our annual clock. The winged alates (the ants would probably say "wingèd"...) emerge each year to mate and form new colonies. As the Natural History Museum points out in its excellent website, ants do not always swarm on the same day each year, but rather across a season.

 
October is late for ant swarms...and I spotted no swallows or swifts in the sky catching the alates. The swallows and swifts have gone south, too early.

The climate emergency creates collateral damage all over Nature. We, Homo "sapiens", could stop that. Will we?





Source:

Peñuelas, Josep, This Rutishauser, and Iolanda Filella. ‘Phenology Feedbacks on Climate Change’. Science 324, no. 5929 (15 May 2009): 887–88. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1173004.