High tides are getting closer and closer to my front door.
Another 6 to 12 inches and we’ll have to build a dyke of some sort. Or move…
I’ve been watching glaciers recede and my swimmin’ holes dry up for 20 years. The glacial retreat at the Columbia Icefields is marked out, year by year.
Yes, they were definitely European hornets. Red-brownish upper body, huge curvy lower body. They are native to Belgium but rare (my parents and uncle are around 70 years old and had never seen one). That said, while 2018 was a record-breaking year temperature wise (which is hardly unusual these days), it was also extremely dry (our ground water reserves still haven’t recovered) which is unusual. It’s possible they were forced to leave their regular habitats to find food/water due to the drought. So their appearance might simply be an anomaly aided by climate change, rather than a permanent habitat change.
Well, there was this drought recently…
If flying insect deaths are due to climate change rather than other possible causes (pesticides, for instance), then I have noticed that.
Firstly, I can drive up to my inlaws two hours out in the country with barely a single insect going splat on my windscreen. Twenty years ago, we were cleaning it constantly on long drives.
Same sort of thing when we went on holidays last year right around the other side of the world to Iceland. We were told before we visited that we should go see Lake Myvatn because it was gorgeous - but midges everywhere, bring your mosquito nets. That might have been true twenty years ago when my mother visited - hardly enough to notice, for us.
I missed the part where you wrote you were in Iceland :smack: and started looking up Lake Myvatn to see if it was an Australian pleonasm or just a coincidence.
We do steal place names from all over the world… 
We used to have mild winters that were 6-10 weeks long. They’re much shorter than that now, and contain more days of extreme cold. Periods of long heavy rain are more frequent than they once were.
I notice a lot of birds that I have never seen before.
We get a certain type of fine, warm, long-lasting rainshowers that I don’t remember getting when I was a kid.
In the 1970s, I lived in Kansas City and performed with a group that gave an outdoor concert every year on Thanksgiving. It was always fucking freezing, and I remember dressing in many layers for the concert and desperately trying to figure out ways to keep warm.
Because of that, I always notice the weather in Kansas City on Thanksgiving. It just doesn’t get that cold any more.
With one exception, I have spent 2-3 weeks in Barbados every winter. For the first 8-10 years my wife and I could take long walks down the beach (from north of Holetown at least as far as Sandy Lane, if you are familiar with the area). There was one spot that was hard to navigate at high tide. Now it is impossible; there just isn’t enough beach. Also about half of the low tides are actually above “mean sea level”, which is absurd.
In Montreal we see cardinals all winter, which is a new thing over the past 20 years. I think other birds are extending their season, but cardinals are really obvious. There is an insect (brown, lady bug shaped) that has appeared during the last ten years. It stinks when you kill it.
Texas summers are milder now, and have been so for 4-5 years now…wonder if some polar vortex thing.
Agreed. I’m from the coastal area of south Texas. I remember when I was a kid in the 80s we often reached 100F. These days the low to mid 90s are more typical. Regarding the seasons, it’s again hard to say I notice any specific pattern of change. A few years ago we had a bad drought (2016 IIRC), but since then the rains have returned, maybe a little above average the last couple of years. Luckily that rain has been spread out rather than having one or two major rain events with long dry spells in between. We’ve also had two winters with snow (2004 on Christmas and 2017 in mid-December) but before that there hadn’t been any snow since before I was born in 1977. As far as ocean levels rising I can’t say that I’ve noticed it. The beaches of Padre Island don’t seem any different to me now than they were when I was a kid. If they have changed it’s nothing dramatic like buildings having to be abandoned to the rising sea levels.
Year-round fire season in California.
Lots of rain and pooling/flooding in places I’ve never seen water build up before.
Seems to get dry and dusty really fast after a few days without rain though.
I live in North Central Thailand. I’m not competent to describe the usual flow of seasons but locals tell me things are happening at different times than usual. (Some of these timings involve interesting lore; e.g. the quest for the delicacy cone mushrooms — our neighbors would even brave our dogs to pick such mushrooms from our old orchard at the picking time if they think we’ve overlooked them.) My sister-in-law even made a joke: Thailand is described as having three seasons, but “We’ve become like a developed Western country now … we have four seasons!”
Increased heat is the most obvious change. December is the coldest month: we usually have a few weeks of cool, and some days where I’ll want to wear socks and sleep with a double blanket. There were Zero such days this year. 
April is the hottest month. I previously reported on the April three years ago. In March 2016 there were eleven consecutive days of 40°+ heat recorded at the nearest major weather station (484000). This was a record, but the record was immediately beaten: April 2016 had twenty-seven consecutive days of 40°+ heat recorded at the same weather station. There were 22 days of 42°+ heat that month (and an average daily high of 41.9°, demolishing the previous record (40.5°) for hottest month set April 1992.
The records from that weather station start in 1949 and show 19 days with 43°+ heat. Fifteen of the 19 were from April or May 2016.
2019 has seemed very hot, but the records at weather station 484000 show nothing special. However that station is an hour away from us with hills in between; where I live we had at least one 44°C day a few weeks ago. :eek:
More ticks and an extra cycle for fleas, so those aren’t fun.
For me personally, I’m a winter sports guy, so the ski slopes are opening later and closing earlier. They almost never get all of the trails open and the snow is rarely powdery. As an ice fisherman, it’s killing my seasons. It used to be Christmas until March, now we’re lucky to get mid-January to mid-February. It’s playing a lot more with dangerous ice as well due to freeze thaws and cavities. I don’t care for it. At the same time, there is less salt on the roads and times when roads are impassable have largely gone away, so that’s nice.
Severe flooding in my old neighbourhood, where we never had flooding before.
More snow in the winter. Completely unbearable heat in the summer, to the point where many in my area died from it.
Weather is becoming more and more unpredictable, also more extreme. Record heat, both in temps and duration, but also exceptional cold spells, due to Polar Vortex issues. Summer storms are more violent and more frequent, as evidenced by the downed tree messes I encounter on a regular basis these days.
Oak trees are sprouting up aplenty in places where there were no oak trees whatsoever 25 years ago. Subboreal is changing into Temperate.
Hunting, I see roe deer in places that had none before. Studies show roe deer are spreading throughout the country as the 2000’s commence. Lack of snow depth is the main cause here.
Ticks are more numerous than before, with new subspecies, due to milder, wetter weather.
Some common bird species from my childhood have almost vanished from my surroundings. Studies tell that many of them have become endangered, even critically so, over the past couple of decades, although climate change is only one factor of many here.
The number and spectrum of insects in my garden, greenhouse and veranda has decreased dramatically from the past, although climate change is only one factor of many here.
new rivers are appearing daily (it seems like) on and in the Greenland ice sheet. We can see them in satellite images. Greenland is melting-fast. Most of the “global warming” effects will be relatively subtle and/or small. A couple of weeks less winter, a degree or so increase in average temp, etc. If the Greenland ice cap melts everyone in the world will be impacted. It is one of the 2 big chunks of ice in the world-the other being Antarctica-that are perched above current sea level. So all that water is going to raise sea level. A lot. Real fast.
Just some observations over the past decade or so:
Summer heat ( and humidity ) lingers on longer and longer, often well into fall. The arrival of September no longer gives you that “there’s light at the end of the tunnel” sense that it used to bring.
While warmer days in winter here and there were not uncommon, now the spurts are warmer and longer. Lots of tree pollen in February. Tree pollen season used to be mid-late March through April. Now it’s Feb-May.
Jet stream shift has been causing double the monthly rainfall totals for 8 months in a row now. In addition to the “normal” rain, every week or so a blob of precipitation on the radar the size of Europe moves slowly across the eastern US. The ground is completely saturated.