Tuesday 17 July 2012

petrichor or kรถppen climate declassification

I wonder if back through the ages when continuous forests covered the continents whether there was less rain fall, water sequestered in living trees, and kept out of circulation. I wonder if the loss the Urwรคlder, the ancient forests, due to the steady advance of human settlement accounts for more flow than—say, the melting of glaciers. In any case, Germany and much of central Europe is being battered by waves of rain, veiled by constant drizzle and cloud that even the strong gales can’t push away.

Thunderstorms, I remember, being a rare occurrence not so long ago but now much more commonplace and terribly tornados, which seem to have no place in European myth or folklore, have recently routed parts of Poland and Germany. In the UK too, forecasters portend an usual sogginess to threaten the festivities and the whole summer seems called due to rainy weather. Meanwhile, the Aquarian imbalance is becoming more pronounced, compared to the States that, in the lee of the rain, is experiencing a severe and sustained drought, which is threatening food supplies. That distinctive earthy smell, as opposed to the ozone cut by lightning bolts, is called petrichor, after the ectoplasm coursing in the veins of the immortals—ichor and stone, and is caused by essential oils produced by some types of vegetation, in response to dry spells, being washed into the soil and absorbed (producing the scent). After successive rainy days, all the oil rinsed away and there is no more fresh, relieved smell but the first notes are one of chemical communication from parent plants to their offspring, research has found, telling them to wait on sprouting, so long as there is the runoff, until they will be sufficiently watered. How is this subtle yet convincing message garbled, I wonder, by artificial irrigation and shifting climates and might such cues also ultimately affect the weather?