Wet winds have been deflected from the airspace above the nation, as a result, and farmers have been left to cope with dried-up rivers and parched soil - although forecasters warned on Saturday that the hot weather would disappear this week, bringing cooler conditions in its wake.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt the spring we have just experienced has been an intensely hot, dry one. Nor is it without precedent. Meteorologists have noted that there have been several springs like it in recent years. The question is: why?
Most scientists suspect that global warming, triggered by the unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the atmosphere, is to blame in some way, though unravelling its impact from the myriad other meteorological influences that shape the weather is tricky.
One suggestion is that the change in weather may be due to the shrinking of the sea ice cap in the Arctic. Ice cover there has been disappearing at a striking rate and is currently at its lowest recorded level for this time of year. Less and less solar radiation is being reflected back into space as a result, and the atmosphere heats up. But how such a phenomenon could affect the weather over Britain is unclear. Read the full report here.
Source: Robin McKie, Science Editor The Observer, guardian.co.uk.
