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Goodbye winter wonderland?
IF the bookies are anything to go by, there's a good chance we'll have a white Christmas this year.
William Hill recently slashed odds of a single snowflake being spotted on December 25 from 6/1 to 9/2 and if you ask BBC TV weatherman Paul Hudson he'll tell you we're "long overdue" a bad winter.
The only problem with that is global warming theory says otherwise. It says that in terms of the long term forecast, things are only going to get warmer and when it comes to white Christmases, dreaming of them – like the song says – is all we will be able to do.
By 2080, average temperatures in Yorkshire could be around four degrees hotter than they are today. That means we can expect summer temperatures to top 38 degrees Celsius – the hottest day ever recorded in Leeds was in August 1990, when the temperature reached 34.4.
Summer heatwaves will become a common annual occurrence and will affect hundreds of thousands of people. When the Continent suffered a prolonged heatwave in 2003, some 15,000 people – many of them elderly – died as a result.
We can expect the same to happen here – hospitals in Leeds already have an emergency plan to clear beds for people suffering heatstroke and respiratory problems.
As if that wasn't bad enough, during the so-called winter months, we can expect a lot more rain. Some believe rainfall in Yorkshire could increase by a third during the winter months and decrease by two-thirds during summer.
Life in Yorkshire will become one of extremes. And the only snowflakes you'll see will be on Christmas postcards sent in the post.
Whereas today's 60-plus generation are wont to say: "I can remember when all this was fields...", come Christmas time a younger generation will be quipping: "I can remember when all this was covered in snow."
So, will our children never know the raw pleasure of pulling back the curtains to find the world has been transformed overnight into a Narnia-like landscape?
Will they never experience the bite of cold crisp air, woolly mittens and hats, the crunch of freshly fallen snow, inappropriate footwear and wet toes, raw fingers and impromptu snowball fights, following someone else's footsteps across a pristine field of white, sledging down the slightest of slopes, snowmen, igloos, icicles, digging the car out of the drive, school being cancelled and the eerie, peaceful calm as the world is smothered in the splendid isolation of a snow storm?
BBC Look North weatherman Paul Hudson, who incidentally is the BBC's first ever climate change correspondent, said the short answer was 'no'.
He said: "Snow could become extinct in Yorkshire. We are not going to get there tomorrow but we may by 2080. But that does not mean that in the short term we won't get a cold winter. The fact of the matter is that we are long overdue a bad winter and this year, as everyone will have noticed, it has been colder and we have seen the leaves falling off the trees in autumn and that hasn't happened in recent years.
"Instead, what we have seen is a lengthening of the summer season and the spring season starting early, so the traditional winter period has been squeezed.
"The last official white Christmas was back in 2004 but if you're talking about the last proper white Christmas, where everywhere was covered in thick snow, you have to go back all the way to 1981."
In the UK, with warmer, wetter weather, we can expect more flooding and a change in the plants and animals which live in our countryside and part of that could mean a massive increase in the rat population.
Paul said: "There is no denying that the world is warming up, the argument for global warming has been won. The sceptics are now few and far between. Over time, the chances of a white Christmas will become less and less.
"That's why many now are looking at how to adapt to a changing climate by around 2050. The problem is, of course, that even if we stopped pumping carbon dioxide into the air today, the effects would continue for many years.
"There's nothing to say that in the next five to 10 years we will see cooler years but the long-term forecast is that things are going to warm up. The world has been warming up since the 1800s and the industrial revolution.
"I think future generations may well look back on ours and ask why we did nothing, when we clearly are aware of the consequences."
Weather forecast from Paul
FOR Christmas there is an unusually high degree of confidence that it will not be a white Christmas this year. The way things are looking at the moment, it's going to be fine and settled and dry. Really, quite pleasant.
A high pressure zone could lead to some mist and fog forming over night and there may be some frost on the lawn when we open the curtains on Christmas Day, with average temperatures of around six or seven degrees. I will stick my neck out and say we won't get a white Christmas this year... although I may end up eating my words!
Weather facts
The song White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin in 1942 and originally featured in the movie Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby.
The definition of a white Christmas used to be that a single snowflake had to be seen from the Met Office HQ in London but there is no longer such a building and so the definition has changed to a single snowflake being observed anywhere in the UK.
The interest in snowy Christmases has its origins in the colder climate of the period 1550-1850 when Britain was in the grip of a 'Little Ice Age'. Winters were particularly persistent and severe. The year 1813 was the last winter that a 'frost fair' was held on the River Thames in London.
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Weather for Leeds
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
