It is too early to write off summer and meteorological experts are dismissing reports by a French weather website claiming there is a 70 per cent chance Europe will have no summer.
What I find impossible is to forecast a weather condition ruling out an entire season for the whole of Europe
Apart from being “improbable” to exclude summer for the whole of Europe, meteorological experts in Malta also think it is “scientifically difficult” to predict so far ahead when the science of climatology is still not at an advanced stage.
The French website is forecasting that this year will go down in European history as the summer season that was replaced with cold weather and rain.
It says the low pressure and lower temperatures across Europe, as well as the extrapolation of the weather and temperature variances over the past months led it to this forecast.
However, Maltese experts argue that it was “scientifically very difficult to predict” that a whole season would be skipped, adding this was also “highly unlikely”.
They explained that such predictions were made through the use of various computers and data with varying temperatures to extrapolate the result.
“It’s not scientifically impossible but what I find impossible is to forecast a weather condition, in this case, ruling out an entire season for the whole of Europe,” one meteorological expert said.
He explained that meteorologists based their predictions on what was known as the jet stream, a current of very strong air at 30,000 feet that tended to guide the generally wet and windy weather systems. The stream usually moved west to east but sometimes went from north to south, bringing spells of bad weather.
“It’s far too early to write off summer based on the current position of the jet stream. It all depends on how they interpreted this,” he said.
“In Malta, May was already 1°C warmer than the average, so it’s already showing it’s not a winter scenario. When it comes to weather, once the science is not that advanced, it is very difficult to make forecasts because there are many variables to take into account,” another meteorologist said.