A Ground Hog's Lament

February 2nd may be Ground Hog Day but this one is very different! What winter? 

We can’t have six more weeks of something that has yet to arrive. 

The Rideau Canal Skateway is "temporarily" closed, until further notice. Good luck with that! The rest of February has temperatures not far from freezing. The change of state of H2O between gas, water and ice can explain a lot of those temperatures. Then we are into March - more of the same but a bit warmer. Skating the Rideau Canal in Ottawa started in 1970 but is highly unlikely in 2024. Why? 

I was a very keen but naive "furcaster" in 1976.  So much to learn to make a difference! But along with the burgeoning science of meteorology, I was also able to witness first-hand, the impacts of global warming and climate change. I started doing presentations on those topics along with severe weather (which goes hand-in-hand with climate change) in 1988 and never stopped. The clients I served much-preferred realism in my furcasts as opposed to abstract predictions (untruths) of the environment.

The following graph summarizes what we witnessed and what the knowledgeable Climate Scientists of the Atmospheric Environment Service were accurately predicting. 

Sadly 2023 will be the latest in the string of record hot years. The following image from October 2023 highlights that the poles are warming faster than the equatorial regions just as forecast. Snow melting from the poles exposes a darker surface that efficiently absorbs the sun's energy. The weakening jet stream follows a highly meandering path along the line of latitude. Blocking weather patterns and split atmospheric flows create a different sort of weather! The public has learnt the hard way about "atmospheric rivers" (see the 2009 COMET Module - Satellite Feature Identification: Atmospheric Rivers by Singleton Philly), drought, heat and freezing rain. 

I am the last of my groundhog colony. Scorching temperatures have dried the soils so that even dirt will blaze now. There is a lot of peat and humus to further fuel the flames. The Boreal forest is comprised of spruce and pine that are loaded with resins ready to explode with the intensity of several nuclear bombs. 

Fort McMurray wildfires 2016

Even ground hogs can be educated and read! "Fire Weather" by my friend John Vaillant is essentially a textbook on the science and sociological aspects of climate change disguised as an action tale about the Fort McMurray wildfires. If you only have time to read 25 pages in 2024, please read Chapter 20. The planet is almost a quarter of the way into the Century of Fire and is on the threshold of "OnePointFive-Celsius" with full steam ahead into the Petrocene.

Be prepared for another smokey, hot and dangerous fire season in 2024. It will start early and probably not even end. 'Zombie fires' continue to burn even under thick layers of snow... only to be reborn in the spring. 

I was one lucky ground hog to make it 35-plus years in the Canadian weather service. I used satellite data to monitor the actual environment; those sensors do not lie. The Ottawa Boss Hog answer to the climate crisis was to threaten those who used the words "climate change" in a sentence. Those were apparently four letter words. 

This naive hog survived two maybe three program review purges that threatened to terminate my furcasting career prematurely.  The new Boss Hog promised change and even included the forbidden words in the name of the department. Sadly nothing has changed and Canada is racing Russia to the bottom of the heap of laggards in the response to the climate crisis. 

For those who noticed, I had a makeover
from albino to brown...  No sun or shadow at 
Singleton on the morning of February 2nd.

Boss Hogs may think of me as an activist… but Singleton Philly is just a realist who wanted to contribute positively. Now he is watching the tipping points tumble. A few developers continue to get filthy rich with one or two more big paydays using the fossil fuels of the Petrocene. 

Singleton Philly tried to make a difference from within… I was one naive little chuck - tried hard but completely failed the next generation.

The carbon footprint is very small within my Sanctuary - planting trees, looking after nature and painting pictures of my surviving friends.

Have a good day eh!

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil the Furcaster Chadwick