Well, I think I spoke a little too soon about the beauty of the snow and the gentile folk frolicking in the street. Although those things were present, it is hard to deny the damage that a moderate snowfall can do in a place like Barcelona, where people just aren't prepared for it. To start with, in our garden, the lettuce was severely damaged and the broad beans cracked at their stems under the weight of the snow! There goes 3 months of growing... and to think it would have been harvest time in a month. The onions were not affected, but the celery was pretty much gone and the artichokes took a beating.
This winter has been a little strange climate-wise. We have had much more rain than normal. Normally this is great, because we can then fill up the rainwater collection deposit under the house which would be enough to get us through the summer, which is typically pretty dry. We have had so much rain that they ground is water-logged and soggy. This means we can't plant the potatoes just yet, else they go putrid in the ground before sprouting. It also means the recently planted trees won't be duly challenged to thrust their roots into deeper ground in search of moisture, meanwhile supporting their above-ground height and helping prevent soil erosion as well. Anyway, we are hoping that things will start to dry out now and we can have a nice spring.
All this climate variability is ostensibly due to ENSO, or the El Niño Southern Oscillation, better known as just "El Niño", the Spanish word for "The Boy". ENSO is a quasi-periodic climate event which occurs every 3-7 years due to increased concentration of heat in the south-east Pacific ocean resulting in a major redistribution of tropical convective rainfall. The causality of El Niño and how it influences global climate are not well understood. Indeed, the phenomena was only reported a few years ago, so we are still researching and trying to better understand it. In any case, it seems to cause increased droughts, floods and other extreme weather.
Canada this year had much less snow than normal (at least in the areas I visited), Newfoundland, Quebec and Ontario. And, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics were seriously threatened by low snowfalls. Barcelona on the other hand has been stricken with unseasonable cold weather, rain upon rain culminating recently with this large, sudden snowfall. It has collapsed power lines, with many still in the dark, 3 days later.
But, like I say, we should not rush to judge this as evidence for or against "global warming" (more accurately, "climate change"). Weather is not the same as climate. The evidence for climate change is substantial, but it's not found in an informal census of remembered or reported weather. Humans are pattern seekers and we tend to see relationships between things even where they don't exist. For this reason we need to be rational about how we reach conclusions about the nature of things.
Peace,
Grant
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