This is a good illustration of how recent wildfire seasons compare. July has been one of the worst Julys on record, but August last year was far worse.

The sky’s a beautiful palette of different hues of blue. After some quick adjustment, this is the closest I can get to the true colours, but you can see some artefacts.

3.50€, as it turns out.

After all that walking, we’ve earned some light refreshment. I was a bit shocked to see that a small glass of sherry sets you back upwards of £10 in London, but this Manzanilla shouldn’t cost more than 4€ incl tapa - which would be another £5++ in London, at a guess.

The Plateresque facade of San Cecilio/St Cecilius includes a decorative detail which is topical today. Bonus point if you can identify it.

Today, but down to slightly more sensible temperatures from tomorrow onwards.

The forecast was for around 41 C yesterday, but I see it reached 44.2 C. 🥵 No wonder it felt warmish. And only briefly down to 25.5 C this morning - still 30 C at 1 am. It looks like today will be similar.

Looking again, the GFS anomaly is significantly higher, so that does explain part of the discrepancy. ECMWF=hot. GFS=crazy hot. I would put more trust in ECMWF, so hopefully there won't be any records. Still hot.

Interesting. My initial thought was that it might be a difference between GFS (US model used by Climate Reanalyzer) and ECMWF (European model), but ECMWF also forecasts a very high anomaly for next week. Source: www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/mod...

This is a week ahead, so details will change, but right across Western/Central/Southern Europe we're going to have a pretty severe heatwave next week. In some cases it could be record-breaking, e.g. 42 C in Netherlands would be a new national record. Source: climatereanalyzer.org/wx/fcst_outl...

Update: 2026 still in second place, and Swiss glaciers will probably have lost as much ice as the average year (2010-20) by the end of July - with another two months of ice melt to go.

It's been a bad year for wildfires in Spain, and much of the season still remains. But it's nothing like as bad as the worst year*, you might say, looking at the left-hand graph (hectares burned). When was that worst year? 2025. Source: www.rtve.es/noticias/202... * Since 2010.

The humble bumblebee at work.

The lead-crime hypothesis is appearing in my TL, so some people might be interested in the first (and only, to date?) meta-study on the topic. It says reducing lead exposure has helped to cut crime, but it’s probably not responsible for most of the decline. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I’m also wondering what these funny things on the facade of one of the university buildings are. I could have sworn they were condensers for a/c (heat pumps), but as I’m in Europe they can’t be.

Relatively pleasant temperature for wandering up to the San Cristóbal viewpoint for sunset.

Almost all of the scaffolding has finally been removed from the cathedral tower after a long cleaning and renovation project. The plan is to open the tower to visitors - there should be great views from the top.

Now confirmed that the mass balance has dropped into negative territory. For some reason I had missed that they have a ranking of years on the left. For the current date, 2026 is in second position, behind 2022 - which also ended up as the year with most ice loss at the end of the melt season.

I’ll illustrate that with a screenshot from one of the webcams at Sölden. This is at 3,000 masl, so much higher than many glacier tongues, yet the dark, bare ice contrasts with the white snow. Being darker, ice has a lower albedo than snow, which means it reflects less of the sun’s energy. 8/

What does that mean in terms of numbers? Last year, Swiss glaciers lost 3% of their ice. For now, this year is more similar to the record years of 22/23, when 5.9%/4.4% was lost. It may even be a bit ahead of them. 6/

That means the glaciers will reach an unwelcome milestone in the next few days: their mass balance for the 2025-26 year will reach 0. In other words, they will have lost all the ice they gained over the winter from the start of October. That shouldn’t happen until late September. 4/

What does that mean for glaciers? Fortunately, the Swiss live up to stereotypes by keeping a close eye on them: Their models say the mass balance of a selection of glaciers is 1.8-3.7 standard devs below the average for 2010-20. (Mass balance is the gain and loss of ice from the glacier.) 3/

Electric HGV sales in Norway. 25% and rising fast. As others have said, China has very ambitious plans too. Source: www.tilnull.no/energi/kjore...

One big factor is a reduction in the amount of coal they burn for power generation. Replaced by gas and/or renewables.

Here you are, with Finland thrown in for free as well.

By popular demand, here is a hall of shame of countries that are punching well above their weight in terms of GHG emissions.

Could you get away with one of these? This ⬇️ is what you see on the outside. www.puravent.co.uk/blog/post/un...

You might say China is the elephant in the room for this argument, but it actually has very similar per capita consumption-based emissions to the UK. And it's pretty clear China is working hard to limit the increase in its emissions, which may have peaked.

I think the premise that the UK is leading the way is misleading. UK emissions per capita are roughly average for the world, and if you include imported CO2 embedded in trade the UK comes out worse. Almost all major economies bar US/Russia are aiming for Net Zero.

I went into the office for a few hours this afternoon and it felt quite warm, particularly on the way in. Turns out it was just over 40 C (and much more in the sun), and still over 35 C now. And 23 C minimum this morning (hotter overnight).