Forecasts for +10C in Oslo Norway the next days, possibly melting all the snow and ruining skiing in the forests during lockdown, my best reason to go outside at the moment..
Too bad you can't go skiing, but I'm a bit more worried about plant and wildlife that "thinks" it's spring and then will get killed when it gets cold again later.
Of course. And I also know a single instance isn't proof of climate change. But I wanted to point out / rant about how the winters have changed over time here. It's sad.
And summers hotter than ever. Have had to buy AC, as if we're in Southern Europe.
Just interested in what temperatures have risen to that you need an AC?
I also understand that buildings in normally colder climates are optimised to keep warm so that if things get hotter in general they are not going to cope well so an AC may well be necessary at temperatures that in other regions would be considered relatively cool.
It can get above 30C here[1][2], which is pretty hot for us. As you say, buildings are well insulated for the winter which means that the walls retains a lot of heat into the night once they've been baking for several days.
Keep in mind the sun goes down at around 11pm, so it doesn't really get cold outside until well past midnight. In my home, that means it can be 25C inside for hours after bedtime unless I use AC and keep the interior cold during the day.
One could get used to 25C I suppose, problem is it's just for a few weeks at a time, then it goes back down. So you never really get used to it.
Is a good point and much what I thought was going on.
So your choices are, put up with it, with potential health problems for older/infirm people, rebuild to suit the new normal, or add an AC which hopefully is running from renewables and not contributing to the problem.
There is no easy solution.
I'm in Brisbane, and our climate is starting to move from northern subtropical to tropical. Most of the older houses are built for heat, but they are not built to deal with cyclones and extreme summer storms. Most of the new houses are not even built for heat, being designs that are popular in Sydney and Melbourne. Actually considering Sydney and Melbourne can get some stinking hot summers they are not even really built for that. Upshot is that most new houses are unliveable without AC, and this is in a country that has always had extremes of heat.
That would be my worry too! I wonder if the next step is to figure out if there's any sort of regularity of the newer climate and to find plants that might be able to support those time cycles..
