'Weathering' Climate Change?

Climate change results in more extreme weather events. These include droughts, wild fires, storms and floods. The UK is, to some extent, currently insulated by geography from the worst of such changes. 2021 has, however, seen the country exposed to upland wild fires, major collapses of cliffs and several violent, damaging storms. These have impact on humans but they also create winners and losers amongst the animals, fungi and plants of our natural world. The National Trust have produced a useful annual audit of the impact of weather on nature in the UK (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/27/how-new-normal-of-wild-weather-put-strain-on-uk-nature-in-2021). Obvious winners in the UK include Grey seals (breeding colonies have done well) and fungi (the warm, wet conditions produced impressive displays). Obvious UK losers include rare upland birds and mammals (killed or forced to move by wild-fires); butterflies (most species substantially declined in 2021) and trees (up-rooted by storms and/or killed by fungal disease, such as Ash dieback). Clearly, climate change is exerting real pressures on nature. These pressures are orders of magnitude worse in many other parts of the globe. We are currently, however, not near the 'safe' global heating figure of 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.