When the North wind doth blow - by Richard... Thursday, July 15, 2010

When the North wind doth blow - by Richard... Thursday, July 15, 2010

If you read people like Daniel Nepstad (who ever thought I'd ever be writing a post where I did not have to explain who he was?), you'd have got the impression that 2005 was Armageddon year for the Amazon, when the rains stopped and everything shrivelled up and died.

Of course, droughts in the Amazon aren't like that – more often they are characterised by the presence of a dry season when normally there is no break in the rains, or by an extension of the normal dry season. But, such is the vastness of the basin that even drought periods cannot be guaranteed to bring er ... drought.

That was the case in 2005 where, according to this paper, the drought did not affect central or eastern Amazonia. It was thus different from the El Niño-related droughts in 1926, 1983 and 1998, and makes a nonsense of a claim that a combination of ENSO and Atlantic-induced droughts will necessarary produce extended dry periods in the same areas. 

What actually happened in 2005 was that there was a extended dry season which heavily affected parts of southwestern Amazonia, giving rise to a considerable number of forest fires. This same area, currently under El Niño influence, seems now to be rather wet.

Certainly, in 2005 it is good to know that the rains returned in October 2005 and generated flooding after February 2006. And, as we have recorded, the flooding has continued to the present day.

But, according to a paper just published, that has not been all that has been going on. In early 2005 there was a single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest, killing an estimated half billion trees, the current study being the first to produce an actual body count for this type of event.

The losses are much greater than previously suspected, the study's authors say, suggesting that storms may play a larger role in the dynamics of Amazon forests than previously recognized.

One of the lead researchers, Jeffrey Chambers, points out that the appearance of a forest hit by a storm is very different from one affected by drought – if you know what you are looking for. And, he says, "We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin—we have solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the Amazon."

Thus, although in in 2005, large parts of the Amazon forest experienced one of the harshest droughts in the last century, with suggestion that drought was the single agent for a basin-wide increase in tree mortality, a very large area with major tree loss (the region near Manaus, in the Central Amazon) was not affected by the drought. 

There, the number of trees killed by the 2005 storm was equivalent to 30 percent of the annual deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region, which experiences relatively low rates of deforestation. And when researchers extrapolated the results to the whole Amazon basin, they came up with the figure of between 441 and 663 million trees destroyed - equivalent to 23 percent of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation of the Amazon forest.

Given the huge controversy over forest loss due to climate change, one wonders how much of the loss in 2005 possibly attributable to storm damage has previously been attributed to drought, and how that might have affected the findings of the IPCC.

Whatever else though, this further points to the complexities of the Amazon, and underlines how little we know – so little that we really should be avoiding the simplistic nostrums of the warmists. We could be saving the planet from global warming, only to have blown down by the wind. But then, what we lose through more warming could be gained by the expected reduction in storms (or vice versa).

One also wonders whether the kids in the Amazon have their own little rhymes, such as, "when the North wind doth blow, we shall have matchsticks". It's not quite as good as our version, but it might sound better in Portuguese, or whatever.

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Day 5 – Battle of Britain - by Richard... Wednesday, July 14, 2010

July 14, seventy years ago was a Sunday. Kanalkampf was in full swing, on a day when the weather was set fair for another bloody series of contests. And although one of the ostensible Luftwaffe targets was the shipping plying the Channel and the southern ports, the longer game was to entice RAF fighters into to battle, on terms which were marginally favourable to the Germans.

Fortunately, we had a tactician in the form of Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, boss of 11 Group which covered the south-east. He refused to commit large numbers of aircraft to the battle, husbanding his forces for the main assaults which he knew were to come. The unfortunate result of that was that only modest numbers of Spitfires and Hurricanes were overhead at any one time, and could quickly be overwhelmed, sometimes with fatal results, as this website records - from which much of this narrative is taken.

With battles breaking out all down the south coast, visible to cliff-top watchers for four days, the BBC decided to get in on the act and send commentator Charles Gardner to the cliff-tops of Dover on the afternoon of Sunday 14th July hoping to witness yet another air battle. At around 15:00 hours with microphone in hand, Gardner looked out from his grandstand view as a small convoy of merchant ships with Royal Navy escorts slowly slipped through the Dover Straits. Suddenly the sky out to sea began to reverberate to the sound of aircraft and within moments Gardner began to record his now famous broadcast (5:37 into the video):-

The Germans are dive-bombing a convoy out to sea! There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven German dive-bombers! - Junkers Eighty-Sevens! There’s one going down on its target now - Bomb! No! He missed the ships – it hasn’t hit a single ship. There are about ten ships in the convoy, but he hasn’t hit a single one and - There! You can hear our anti-aircraft going at them now. There are one, two, three, four, five, six - there are about ten German machines dive-bombing the British convoy, which is just out to sea in the Channel.

Unknown to the BBC man but in accordance with Keith Park's tactics, there were just three Hurricanes belonging to Red Section of No.615 Squadron patrolling over the convoy. Hardly pausing for breath Gardner rattled on in ever growing excitement and glee!

I can't see anything. No! - We thought he had got a German one at the top then, but now the British fighters are coming up! Here they come. The Germans are coming in an absolute steep dive, and you can see their bombs actually leave the machines and come into the water. You can hear our guns going like anything now. I am looking round now - I can hear machine gun fire, but I can't see our Spitfires, they must be somewhere there. Oh! Here's one coming down!

From his vantage point and probably like any less-than-well-informed British patriot, Gardner would not have contemplated the RAF taking losses and believed that every RAF fighter was a Spitfire! The three Hurricanes were in fact heavily outnumbered and there were more than just the Stukas to deal with, as deadly Me 109s from both Jagdgeschwader 3 and 51 were providing escort to the dive-bombers. Watching as the spectacle in the sky continued, Gardner then joyously exclaimed:-

There's one going down in flames! Somebody's hit a German and he's coming down with a long streak - coming down completely out of control - a long streak of smoke. And now a man’s baled out by parachute! The pilot's baled out by parachute! He's a Junkers Eighty-Seven and he's going slap into the sea. And there he goes - SMASH! A terrific column of water and there was a Junkers Eight-Seven. Only one man got out by parachute, so presumably there was only a crew of one in it!

The Operational Record Book of No. 615 Squadron. recorded the following: "At 15:00 hours Red section were patrolling convoy near Dover, when convoy was attacked by 40 JU87s which were escorted by ME109s. Pilot Officer M.R. Mudie (Red 3) was shot down, and jumped by parachute. Red 1 and 2 put several bursts into JU87s but were unable to observe results as they were being attacked.

For 24 years old Michael Mudie had stood little chance in evading the Schwarms of Me 109s on his tail. No less than four Jagdflieger claimed a share in the destruction of his Hurricane (L1584 KW-G). These victorious German pilots included Oberfeldwebel Trebing of JG3, Walter Krieger of JG51 along with two of his better-known unit comrades by the names of Oberleutnant Josef Priller and Hauptmann Horst Tietzen.

Unaware of his error in misidentifying the shot down aircraft, Gardner did nevertheless state in his recording that:

It's impossible to tell which are our machines and which are the Germans!

Keeping his attention upon the battle still on-going he observed:

… I am looking out to sea now. I can see the little white dot of a parachute as the German pilot is floating down towards the spot where his machine crashed with such a big fountain of water about two minutes ago!

Tragically however the "German"’ under the parachute was a severely wounded Michael Mudie, and after commentating further on the air battle, things quietened down briefly for Gardner to remark:

No damage done, except to the Germans, who lost one machine and the German pilot, who is still on the end of his parachute … I can see no boat going out to pick him up, so he'll probably have a long swim ashore!

Knowing that Red Section was in trouble, No.615 Squadron had scrambled Yellow, Green and Blue Sections from their forward operating base at Hawkinge and would soon join the battle. Also about to engage with the enemy attackers were Hurricanes from No. 151 Squadron and the Spitfires of No.610 Squadron whose ensuing combat would begin to "entertain" Gardner quite considerably.

Oh, there's another fight going on, away up now! There we go again! What? - Oh! We have just hit a Messerschmitt. Oh, that was beautiful. He's coming right down … he's coming down like a rocket now!… You can't watch these fights very coherently for long. You just see about four twirling machines, you just hear little bursts of machine-gunning, and by the time you've picked up the machines they've gone! – Hullo, there are one, two, three – and look! There's a dogfight going on up there … now there's something coming right down on the tail of another. Here they come – Yes! They are being chased home – and how they are being chased home! There are three Spitfires chasing three Messerschmitts now. Oh boy! Look at them going! Oh! – Look how the Messerschmitts - ! Oh boy! That was really grand! There's a Spitfire behind the first two. He will get them. Oh yes – oh boy! I’ve never seen anything so good as this. The RAF fighters have really got these boys taped!

The critically hurt Michael Mudie was eventually picked up from out of the sea by a Royal Navy vessel and hastily transferred to Dover Hospital for treatment. That same evening the BBC broadcast Charles Gardner's recording, which was later criticised in some quarters as having lacked dignity towards a life and death struggle!

Very sadly, the gallant Michael Mudie succumbed to his wounds the following day. On Thursday 18 July Flying Officer Lionel Gaunce and Pilot Officer Cecil Montgomery travelled from RAF Kenley to East Molesey in Surrey, to represent No. 615 Sqn. at the funeral of their fallen comrade, where to this day he rests in a well-kept grave respectfully tended to ensure his brave sacrifice is not forgotten.

And the BBC had been there to get it wrong. Nothing much changes.

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