{"id":14525,"date":"2025-05-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=14525"},"modified":"2025-05-16T08:02:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T08:02:20","slug":"uk-drought-2025-spring-rainfall-jet-stream-climate-change-may-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/uk-drought-2025-spring-rainfall-jet-stream-climate-change-may-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Why spring 2025 is so\u00a0dry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n Jack Marley<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

April showers bring May flowers according to an old English saying.<\/p>\n\n

This phrase, which might have originated in a verse written by poet Thomas Tusser in 1557<\/a>, harks back to a time when most people depended on rough rules that were borne of practical experience to know when to plant crops. \u201cSuch weather lore was the only forecast available<\/a>\u201d, says meteorologist Rob Thompson at the University of Reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UK farmers waited in vain for showers this April. The unusually dry month gave lie to the centuries-old expression, which hints at a climate that was generally more obedient to familiar rhythms. The heating of Earth\u2019s atmosphere and ocean, predominantly caused by the mass burning of fossil fuels, has changed that. What we can expect in each season is no longer so assured. <\/p>\n\n

So, how do we keep our bearings on a warming planet?<\/p>\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s climate coverage comes from our award-winning<\/a> weekly climate action newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Forecasting chaos<\/h2>\n\n

Forecasters have an enormous challenge in predicting how the weather in each season will change, and in communicating the role of climate change.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cOverall, we can be confident that climate change is bringing warmer conditions in all seasons,\u201d say atmospheric scientists Simon H. Lee and Matthew Patterson at the University of St Andrews. Europe in particular has been a hotspot<\/a> for warming, with temperatures rising at roughly double the global average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patterson suspects that this has already warped our perceptions of what a \u201cnormal\u201d season feels like. When a month arrives with temperatures closer to the long-term average for instance, like June 2024, people tend to experience it as unusually cold<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScientists also have strong evidence to suggest that drought conditions will become more common,\u201d Lee and Patterson continue.<\/p>\n\n

The UK has had roughly half the rainfall it would usually expect for March and April, and spring 2025 is on track to be the country\u2019s driest on record<\/a>. Some of the latest research on Earth\u2019s water cycle predicts that these dry bouts will get drier, while wet ones will get wetter<\/a>, and that the switch from drought to deluge will be more sudden (\u201cweather whiplash\u201d, as some have called it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This doesn\u2019t fully explain the UK\u2019s record-warm and dry spring, however. There are also \u201cweather blocks\u201d to factor in. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cA blocking event is a disruption to the usual weather patterns of Earth\u2019s middle latitudes,\u201d explains Tim Woollings, a professor in physical climate science at the University of Oxford. In this part of the world it\u2019s the jet stream, a river of air high in the atmosphere, that typically sets the agenda by driving transient weather over the British Isles from the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n

Since the beginning of March, a zone of high pressure has rested above the UK and blocked the jet stream like a boulder in a river, Lee and Patterson say. The weather has effectively remained \u201cstuck\u201d<\/a>. This phenomenon is responsible for a lot of extreme weather in the middle latitudes, as blocks prevent relief from heatwaves or cold snaps, Woollings adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There isn\u2019t conclusive evidence to suggest these blocks are becoming more common as the climate warms according to Lee and Patterson. But one thing is clear: the climate is incredibly complex \u2013 and our continuing intervention in it is reckless.<\/p>\n\n

High-temperature haiku<\/h2>\n\n

Seasons are our living world\u2019s accommodation of the variation in day length, temperature and weather during the year.<\/p>\n\n

What we perceive as seasonal features, like the shedding of leaves, the arrival and departure of migratory animals, are the adaptations species have made to the average set of conditions that have remained within a particular range for several thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n

Changes in Earth\u2019s orbit and spin axis gradually influenced the climate and seasons over millennia. More recently, fossil fuel burning has been the dominant influence.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cAs such, humanity is currently on the path to compressing millions of years of temperature change into just a couple of centuries,\u201d say ancient climate experts Dan Lunt (University of Bristol) and Darrell Kaufman (Northern Arizona University).<\/p>\n\n

The seasonal signals we once thought of as immutable are changing to match these changing conditions. It\u2019s too much, too fast<\/a> for most species to deal with \u2013 including our own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reorient around a rapidly changing climate, we could do as Tusser did six centuries ago, and write poetry.<\/p>\n\n

Haiku is perhaps our most useful cultural barometer of climate change. These poems, which originated in 17th-century Japan, comprise three short lines and usually include a reference to the season in which they were composed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA successful haiku could be described as a half-finished poem,\u201d say lecturer in publishing Jasmin Kirkbride (University of East Anglia) and creative writing PhD candidate Paul Chambers (University of Bristol). The listener must complete the scene in their head by linking it with an intense moment of perception<\/a> from their own life, in which \u201cthe vast is perceived in one thing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As seasons have shifted, so have their markers in haiku. Snowdrops, once a feature of February haiku, now appear close to Christmas. The language used to describe certain species has altered too, the pair say, to become \u201csoaked in grief\u201d. Butterflies that once formed \u201cclouds\u201d in earlier haiku, for example, are now \u201clone survivors\u2026 pushing against time\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

Kirkbride and Chambers urge a new generation of poets to continue recording these changes in haiku: \u201cThe vast climate crisis is upon us, and we should write about it.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n\n

Jack Marley<\/a>, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Marley, The Conversation April showers bring May flowers according to an old English saying. This phrase, which…\n","protected":false},"author":1199,"featured_media":14527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/e\/e5\/Elizabeth_Lake_%28LA_County%2C_California%29_%282018%29.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[10409,10392,10403,10412,120,10415,10394,10414,10399,10397,10393,10396,2591,10413,10411,10405,10408,10404,10416,10400,10402,10398,10401,10395,10410,10391,10407,10406],"class_list":{"0":"post-14525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-earth","8":"tag-anthropogenic-climate-impact","9":"tag-april-showers","10":"tag-atmospheric-pressure-systems","11":"tag-blocking-events","12":"tag-climate-change","13":"tag-climate-communication","14":"tag-drought-risk-uk","15":"tag-dry-spring-record-uk","16":"tag-earths-water-cycle-changes","17":"tag-european-temperature-rise","18":"tag-extreme-weather-europe","19":"tag-fossil-fuel-emissions","20":"tag-global-warming-effects","21":"tag-haiku-climate-crisis","22":"tag-historical-weather-lore","23":"tag-jet-stream-disruption","24":"tag-long-term-climate-change","25":"tag-meteorological-blocks","26":"tag-poetry-and-climate-change","27":"tag-rainfall-intensity-increase","28":"tag-seasonal-climate-perception","29":"tag-seasonal-climate-shift","30":"tag-seasonal-weather-patterns","31":"tag-spring-temperature-trends","32":"tag-uk-drought-2025","33":"tag-uk-spring-rainfall","34":"tag-weather-forecasting-challenges","35":"tag-weather-whiplash","36":"cs-entry","37":"cs-video-wrap"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14526,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions\/14526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}