Capricious weather in July: What is “Shifting Baseline”, this phenomenon that concerns us all?

Result: morale is down. capricious weather july: what “shifting Similarly, And feed many conversations. However, “What a rotten weather”, “it’s cold today”, we hear regularly.

Rightly? Meanwhile, In reality, the current July is far from being worse than those observed in Belgium in general. Meanwhile, The average maximum temperature of the last 30 days would thus be 25 degrees, compared to 23.1 according to the average for July since 1991. Nevertheless, And the average temperature of the last 30 days is around 20.1 ° against 18.5 ° according to seasonal normal.

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“Many people, especially on social networks, pesting against the time they consider rotten, comments Pascal Mormal, meteorologist at MRI. But in reality, summer is far from catastrophic for the moment. Meteorological summer (Editor’s note: from June 1 to August 31) is even surplus in terms of temperatures. Since June 1, the average temperature observed at the Uccle station Weather in Belgium) is 19.5 ° against 17.6 according to normal from 1991 to 2020 over the same period.

Weather: a hot day on Saturday. before thunderstorms and a very mixed week, “the return of a very Belgian weather, for the end of July”

Clearly: summer is one of the capricious weather july: what “shifting hottest ever experienced in Belgium. “But it is true that we have known a very hot June and that July is a little dull. Nevertheless, July remains a hotter month than the average so far. We should end the month with an average of 19.4 ° against 18.7 ° according to normal.”

Even in terms of sunshine, July is better than normal with 205 hours currently against 203 on average. And in terms of precipitation, it has only 105.8 mm since July 1 against 139 normally, until July 31.

Capricious weather july: what "shifting – Capricious weather july: what "shifting

All victims of ecological amnesia?

On all points, the current month is better than usual. How to explain the feeling of the population? We would actually be prey to “shifting baseline” that we could translate into “ecological amnesia”. According to Serge Zaka. doctor of agroclimatology, “global warming is gradually changing our bearings, capricious weather july: what “shifting to the point that a normal day of the past seems to us today abnormally cool. Statistics are there to remind us.”

Clearly: we have been used to hot days since spring so that we have temperatures close to. seasonal norms now seems abnormal to us. By dint of warmer summers, which was once a normal month of July seems to us today fresh or disappointing. Our benchmarks are evolving with the climate, and a weather close to yesterdays now seems abnormal. A “less hot” summer is not necessarily bad, but just closer to what it was before. “People forget very quickly, confirms Pascal Mortal. The month of July is surplus in terms of insolation. temperature, and loss of precipitation but, despite that, people believe that we have a rotten month. Certainly, it is not the most beautiful in July but it is far from being a rotten capricious weather july: what “shifting month.”

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Especially since normal is calculated over the period from 1991 to 2020. “And that they were fired from above with global warming. Before the 1990s, seasonal normals were much lower and our elders must remember.”

And Pascal Mortmal recalls that the months of July and August are traditionally rainy months. And that having days when the maximum temperature does not exceed 15 degrees – which has not happened for. some time here – was completely usual a few decades ago. “People unfortunately think that with global warming, we will have dry and hot summers. But we remain dependent on an oceanic climate.”

We no longer pay attention to climate change

With climate change, our summers may well be more rainy than before.