With small amounts of rain on only nine days during the month, May reinforced a statistically significant trend of lower spring rainfall here since 2000. A recent paper in the International Journal of Climatology confirms this trend for the UK as a whole, linking it to atmospheric pressure changes over Greenland brought about by...
Dr Phil Smith: Wildlife Notes September 2015
Although measurable rain fell on ten days during the month, quantities were very small and temperatures above average. September therefore ended up as another desperately dry month, the duneland ground water-table being the lowest recorded since the drought of the mid -1990s. However, the often sunny weather brought out lots of late-summer insects, including one...
Dr Phil Smith: Wildlife notes August 2015
August was a rather cool and unsettled month, though rainfall amounts were no more than average, contrasting with record deluges in the south. The rain that did fall soon evaporated making little impact on the depleted water-table. The 50th anniversary bash for Ainsdale Sand Dunes National Nature Reserve on 8th fortunately coincided with a sunny...
Summary: Sefton Coast Isle of Man Cabbage surveys, 2015
All the known Sefton sites for the British endemic Isle of Man Cabbage (Coincya monensis ssp. monensis) were visited in late May/early June 2015 and numbers of plants counted. At Crosby Marine Park, where sand was removed from a dune ridge for a 2011 coast protection scheme, 1361 plants were found on the extracted ridge...
