Ground frosts in April are normal and not associated with climate change, but summer temperatures at the beginning of spring are, says Ondřej Lhotka from the Institute of Global Change Research of the Academy of Sciences. Above-average temperatures at the beginning of spring are more problematic than frosts, because it is a temperature shock for nature.
After many above-average warm weeks and the so-called summer days in March and April, when temperatures reached above 25 degrees Celsius, a colder period arrived with night frosts.
“You could say that night frosts and ground frosts are more or less normal in April. Even in the current warmer climate, April temperatures below zero are normally recorded in lower locations, such as Polabí and other lowlands,” explains Lhotka.
However, according to him, the problem arose because previously the summer temperatures were abnormally high in some places, which are not usual for the end of March and the beginning of April. “It is not completely standard for us to have an almost tropical day at the end of March,” he adds.
Temperature jumps are especially problematic for animals and vegetation. “Plants and trees, for example, are much more susceptible to these frosts, because they do not have a calendar and bloom naturally, for example, due to the air temperature or some other factors,” says the climatologist.
“I would say that at the beginning of May it would not be strange to see some weaker night frosts, but according to the forecasts so far, we do not expect that this year. When I looked at the forecast of my colleagues from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, the next week should again have above-average temperatures,” he says Lhotka.
The climatologist predicts that similar situations like this year will become more and more frequent. “We are observing at least similar abnormalities. Two years ago in December on New Year’s Eve, temperatures were around 12 degrees Celsius. In recent years, temperatures have reached many times high temperatures in the cold half of the year. The fact that cold air then flows into the Czech Republic from the north cannot be influenced and has no bearing on not even the share of climate change,” he says, adding that it is impossible to confirm the same situation for every coming year.
According to most of the studies that Lhotka has read or worked on, similar periods of frost after the early warming will increase in the future. He emphasized that frost in itself is not a problem, problems with them occur after a period of high temperatures. These are caused by climate change.
Tags: Climate change responsible April frosts warm climatologist
-
