Suppose we didn't have a spring or summer?

So far this is just speculation, we’re probably just suffering an ‘abnormally’ cold spell that will pass in time. But… What would happen if it didn’t, and we had a cold or cold and wet spring and summer? The two most prominenet effects I can think of would be those on bees and birds, who would suffer as they did last year, and the farmers, who would suffer another hard year, as eventually we all would.

So let’s run a thought experiment as to what the effects of a ‘year without a summer’ would be.

see 2012.

Welcome to Scotland

Year without summer 1816

Resulted in major food shortages, quite a lot on wikipedia about it – it sounds horrid as it was a global event

I am staying at work until the heatwave arrives * – as im fed up of the cold and dont want to waste any more holidays on cold days

*I have ordered one so it better arrive!

Yep….1816

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

It meant the bicycle got invented

*I have ordered one so it better arrive!

To be delivered by Yodel.

If (when) it doesn’t arrive, check in your wheelie bin, and hope the bin men haven’t been (maybe this is why they only collect fortnightly now? give people more chance of finding their parcel deliveries!)

I have lost a brand new hoover to the dustmen that way, seemed ironic when there was such a faff taking the old one to the right place to be recycled and the new one just got taken and sent to landfill

I will keep an eye out for the sunshine though – ive heard of it shining out of some strange places – but thatd be a new one 🙂

Every cloud.
No need to fit those summer tyres I bought 4 years ago just before I moved to Scotland.Still in their wrapping.

We’d miss out on this..

Year without summer 1816

Resulted in major food shortages, quite a lot on wikipedia about it – it sounds horrid as it was a global event
Not forgetting the most terrible hardship of that year:

In July 1816 “incessant rainfall” during that “wet, ungenial summer” forced Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and their friends to stay indoors for much of their Swiss holiday.

Some interesting reading in that there wikipedia article!

The problems of 1816 are widely thought to be down to the eruption of Mt. Tambora.

two most prominenet effects I can think of would be those on bees and birds, who would suffer as they did last year

No birds & bees…I better call the missus & get her home from work sharpish.

Not just 1816:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum).[1] While it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[2] It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[3][4][5] or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850,[6] though climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. NASA defines the term as a cold period between AD 1550 and AD 1850 and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.[7] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the LIA suggested largely independent regional climate changes, rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.[8]
Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population.

http://www.thegwpf.org/russian-scientist-warns-earth-heading-ice-age/