The Other C-word
From COVID to Climate Change: temperature measurement at Cambridge University Botanic Garden
The UK public are quaking in their boots as the first ever red alert extreme heat warning has been issued by the Met Office, forgetting that it was pretty darn hot back in ’76 and ’47, and we somehow managed to survive those hot blasts. I don’t recall any alarmism, just ice creams melting faster and a need to sleep on the lawn at night under a damp towel.
"This is the first time we have forecast 40°C in the UK. The current record high temperature in the UK is 38.7°C, which was reached at Cambridge Botanic Garden on 25 July in 2019."
The phrase ‘Botanic Garden’ conjures a cool leafy area where air temperatures are accurately recorded by instrumentation housed in one of those pleasant Stevenson screens. No urban heat island effect there surely, by George!
We’d be mistaken in this assumption when it comes to CUBG and here’s why:
On the day of reckoning I gather that they also opened the shutters and doors of the plant growth facility (a swanky glass and timber greenhouse) to allow it to coo…