February 2014

We are experiencing a rather mild January this year.  This is thanks to the tropical air whisking across the north Atlantic Ocean and picking up a great deal of moisture on its way.  This moisture is being dropped on the British Isles making us all feel rather damp.

This offshore group of islands sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean protecting countries such as Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway from the full force of Atlantic winds and tidal surges.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this.  The advantages include good irrigation and generally mild weather that rarely gets too hot or cold.  The disadvantages include the potential for floods and wind damage.  In short we have a Maritime Temperate Climate, which has served us well in the past and generated a successful seafaring nation with fertile farms.  No-one in this land is more than about 70 miles from the coast.
However, our close neighbours on the continent have a Continental Climate, and because of the enormity of the land mass from France to China, the sea has little influence on it. The consequence of this is that less moisture and wind get into the interior.  This leads to greater heating in the summer with temperatures in some areas approaching 50° Celsius and cooling in the winter, when the planet tilts Eurasia away from the sun and temperatures in some places drop to -50° Celsius in the winter.  Sometimes, the wind changes, and the continent has a greater influence on us than the ocean.  When this happens we get a temporary heat wave in the summer or a rather cold spell in the winter as we did last year, and this carried on until well into April, during which the temperature did not exceed 6° Celsius for several weeks.

All this influences our wildlife, and we have a biodiversity that is unique.  Sea-birds and other wetland birds love the British Isles, and millions come to our shores and wetlands for the winter to escape the ice, which is one reason why an airport in the Thames Estuary would be a bad idea as the risk of bird-strikes would make low level flying there rather dangerous.  The mild often damp summers mean that we have plenty of insects which attracts insectivorous birds such as swifts and swallows from Africa to come to our islands to breed.  In short, in general, we have a rather interesting green and pleasant land!