The feast of St Martin coincides, on November 11, with Remembrance Day, enjoying pride of place within local lore through its association with blissful weather and a surfeit of nuts, as the Maltese lingo would have it.
‘Is-sajf ta’ San Martin’ (St Martin’s summer) is a popular vignette based on empirical observation, that of an extended period of clement weather which normally characterises the first half of November. In an era when climate change had not yet disrupted seasonal weather patterns, November was still synonymous with tempestuous and blustery autumn weather, with the occasional Grigalata (spate of north-easterly wind) churning things up.
Hence, it comes as no surprise that the respite from the elements brought about during Is-sajf ta’ San Martin was considered as something noteworthy, which warranted the coining of a discreet expression. Conversely, millennials fail to see the rationale behind such a saying, given the prolonged spells of dry weather that we have been increasingly exposed to in autumn over the past decade. Besides the linguistic intrigue that these pronounced seasonal changes constitute, there is a grim reality which is being appreciated only by the few.
November ranks as the third wettest month in Malta, when taking stock of monthly rainfall averages computed over decades of meteorological data. As a result, by the end of November, our islands should, in a regular year, be bestowed by almost half (234mm) their annual rainfall allocation. At the time of writing of this column, the average rainfall count for the islands (as of the September 1) stood at 130mm (statistics courtesy of the Maltese Islands Weather website), which is a full four inches less than par at this time of year.
This might not seem considerable if one ignores the fact that the most recent significant rainfall fell on the islands over a month ago, with October also being considerably drier than the norm (32.5mm of rainfall received in October 2020, compared with a monthly average of 89.0mm for October) and that three-quarters of the rain we received this year was bestowed during a single storm in September. Below-par annual rainfall counts were registered in the Maltese islands during most previous years, with only the 2018/2019 rainy season breaking the buck, suggesting that dampened rainfall over the islands is becoming the norm.
The writing has been on the wall, literally, for a number of years now. For instance, the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report for Europe (Chapter 23) states that “Projected changes in the length of meteorological dry spells show that the increase is large in Southern Europe”.
It is time for policymakers worldwide to abandon populist drivel and to embark on concrete commitments to mitigate future climate change impacts- Alan Deidun
Hence, prolonged drought, even outside the summer season, will become the norm in the Mediterranean, coupled with shorter, more intense periods of precipitation, leading to alternating stints of wildfires and flooding. The same IPCC report hints at a greater prevalence of soil erosion and desertification in southern Europe, as a lack of freshwater resources makes agriculture no longer viable and, from a more mundane point of view, a spike in electricity bills in the same region as the reliance on climate-control facilities increases.
Once again, smug as we are through our dependence on desalination plants, which ensures that we still get running fresh water in our taps, and on our air-conditioning units, we fail to see the plight for our groundwater resources, for agriculture and for wild vegetation and fauna that this persistent annual autumn drought will result in.
As the mother of all ironies would have it, on November 4, while the US and the engrossed global onlookers were on tenterhooks concerning the final outcome of the US elections, a feeble media announcement struggled to rear its head above the noise. The US had formally rescinded its adherence to the Paris climate pact, a global agreement that was forged through the US’s pivotal role way back in 2015 under the Barack Obama administration and which has been ratified by a staggering 189 countries to date.
Detractors of the pact denounce its voluntary and non-binding nature, ensuring that targets for greenhouse gas curbs are established by countries themselves. This is, indeed, one of the major shortcomings of the agreement which, however, is the prevailing collaborative instrument we have to date and which has enjoyed broad endorsement by the global community. US President-Elect Joe Biden has pledged to reinstate the US’s former position on climate change, through an executive order (which does not need congressional approval), paralleling Donald Trump’s previous counter action.
While the raging COVID-19 pandemic captivates the world’s attention, many of us are oblivious to the more insidious menace posed to societies at large by climate change. The notorious heat wave of 2003 alone, for instance, is estimated to have triggered 30,000-40,000 untimely deaths in France and Italy. It is time for policymakers worldwide to abandon populist drivel and to embark on concrete commitments to mitigate future climate change impacts.
The current subdued economic sentiment imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic is yet another challenge that those campaigning to tackle climate change have to face. Failure to do so, however, will result in an economic and societal crisis which will eclipse the ensuing COVID-19 one.