What will the weather be like and what to prepare for in the future

Winter turning into summer almost overnight, then somersaulting back to freezing and snowing, desert flooding, tornadoes in places they’ve never been… The weather has gone crazy, or climate change has arrivedwhich we’ve been warned about for years, will happen if we don’t start treating the planet differently?

A lot of questions that a lot of people are looking for answers to this year. We put some of them to climatologist Pavlo Zahradníček from the Climate Services Department of the Institute of Global Change Research of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

This year we are witnessing really big temperature fluctuations and records. Did the weather really suddenly change that much, or do we just have short memories?

Fluctuations are a standard manifestation of the weather and it is always necessary to look at long-term trends and also the magnitude of those fluctuations. Well, from a long-term perspective, the climate in the Czech Republic is warming, which is why extremes are more frequent. For example, the last decade has even warmed twice as fast as the previous ones, which points to an acceleration of warming. For example, February was unusually warm, which would also be among the warmest Marches, which is quite unheard of.

With everything that happens with the weather – floods in places where it rains exceptionally well, huge thunderstorms, unexpected tornadoes – conspiracy theories arise that the weather is “controlled” or influenced by humans on purpose. What do you think about it?

The first problem is our memory. We only perceive the weather of the last weeks or at most years, so some phenomena seem unusual to us, but we know them from the past. For example, the first tornado recorded in our territory was already described by Kosmas in his chronicle, and according to this testimony, it was also a very strong one. So most of what is happening is not new. Unfortunately, they appear more and more frequently and more intensively and cause more damage. It makes a difference if there is a drought once every 20 years or every other year. Of course, humans influence the climate, but not in the way that some disinformation theories say. No one really controls the weather, we don’t have a magic button to make it rain.

Predictions about warming and climate change expected a slower development – what is the reason that it is happening much faster?

One reason is that greenhouse gas emissions simply continue to rise. The only period when they stopped at least for a while was the covid period. And they also have their inertia, so even if we stopped the production of greenhouse gases completely now, it would show up with a delay. In addition, so-called positive feedbacks also enter into this – if, for example, the arctic glacier melts, the reflectivity of the surface changes and it warms even faster there, so this causes further and greater melting of the glacier.

What influences climate the most? And can anything really be done about it?

The climate is influenced by natural and anthropogenic factors that have always acted on the planet. This is, for example, a change in the orbit or changes in the amount of solar radiation. However, these factors change the climate very slowly (even over hundreds of thousands of years), but currently they have a rather cooling effect. So practically the only factor that affects the climate is the amount of greenhouse gases or the change in the use of the earth’s surface. That is, everything connected with human activity.

If we want the climate to start returning to natural fluctuations, it is also necessary to return the amount of greenhouse gases to normal natural values. And even if we do it now, it won’t have much effect on the warming until 2050, but the changes made at the same time will only be known after 2050. If we do nothing, it will warm up to 5 °C in our country – and just to imagine , has warmed by 2 °C over the last 60 years and the increase in hot days is threefold. So you can imagine what it would look like: there would be around 40-50 hot days with a maximum above 30°C per year on average, and significantly more during an extremely hot summer. If you are interested, I recommend ours the Climrisk applicationwhere you can find estimates – even very pessimistic ones.

So the voices of those who believe that the changes taking place at the same time are just regular and natural cycles for the planet, are they not right?

Climatic changes have always occurred on our planet, but they were caused by natural factors, which, as I mentioned, have a cooling effect, and yet it is warming. In the past, for example, there was also a warmer period in the Middle Ages, but it was only on part of the planet, now it is on 98%. Then there was the Little Ice Age in the 16th to 18th centuries, which was characterized by lower solar activity and possibly volcanic activity. Currently, these influences simply do not affect us to such an extent, and therefore these are not natural changes.

We are already getting used to the fact that there are almost no “transitional” seasons, i.e. spring and autumn – that it goes from summer to winter and from winter to high temperatures again. Will it be so “normal”?

I strongly disagree with this statement. We still have four seasons, but they are all getting warmer, so sometimes it seems to us that spring already looks like summer, but like the summer of 60 years ago and not the current one, when the temperatures are even significantly higher. On the other hand, our winter season is getting shorter and spring is starting earlier. But the winter still hasn’t gone away, and it never will.

If I take the fluctuations this year, they were really sudden and very record-breaking, to what extent can such rapid changes be predicted and what causes them?

“April” weather belongs to April and is normal. But it is not normal for it to be 30 °C. On the contrary, intrusions of cold air with temperatures below the freezing point are quite typical in April and they also have an impact on the vegetation.

In the past, the intrusion of cold air would not have mattered, because the vegetation would not have fully blossomed yet. But this year nature was 30-40 days ahead of schedule and the damage is enormous. We have been warning about this since February, which was also very warm and it was clear that the frosts would do damage.

How much can we trust the weather forecast and how far ahead can it “see”?

In stable situations, the forecast is reliable for about 7-10 days. Unfortunately, there are days when you don’t know what will happen in an hour. It is much easier to predict air temperatures, on the other hand, precipitation is highly variable in time and space, and it is also difficult to determine the exact location of thunderstorms.

So can we believe the predictions of a hot and dry summer that have already appeared?

These estimates are based on seasonal forecasts for 3 months ahead, the reliability of which is particularly poor for the Central European region. That we are expecting a season with above-average temperatures is not really surprising in the era of climate change and rising temperatures. But it is practically impossible to say whether the rainfall season will be below average or above average.

So I don’t even dare to guess what this summer will be like, although it is more than likely going to be warmer than the long-term average.

The last few summers have been quite hot and dry, and when the rain has come, it’s often torrential. There are areas where it rains really little. What is behind it?

Again, I will surprise you a little, but in the long term, precipitation is increasing very slightly. The drought in the Czech Republic in the last 20 years has another main cause. And that is an increase in air temperatures, i.e. more evaporation from the countryside. Because of this, water is missing even during normal rainfall. In addition, as you rightly noted, there is a lot of torrential rain in the summer, which is not a great benefit for the landscape. Less snow cover during the winter and the early onset of spring, as was the case this year, also “help” the development of drought. Vegetation begins earlier to live and consume water that would normally be replenished by snowmelt. We are therefore dependent on the spring rains, which have been decreasing for a long time, although of course there are years when it rains a lot even in the spring and it saves the whole situation.

Climate forecasts say that we have to get used to a warmer and drier climate, but what will it realistically look like and how can we prepare for it? What about the threat of a really major water shortage?

In the future, this does not mean that we will always have drought, winters without snow or hot summers. Of course, the occurrence of such years will be significantly more frequent, but there will also be years very rich in precipitation and snow or summer will be nothing but pleasant. How to prepare for the bad years? I recommend looking at the effects of the drought in your area in 2015-2020. If your well ran dry at the beginning of June, then you have to find an alternative source of drinking water. Society and individuals must look for adaptation measures that will help. For example, the connection of water supply systems, retention tanks, etc. It is necessary to store water from when it rains a lot for the dry season.

But in order to set functional adaptation measures at all, climate change must not reach such proportions that no measures will help. Therefore, it is mainly necessary to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases.