Global heat in ‘uncharted territory’: 2023 could be the hottest year on record

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/08/world/extreme-global-temperature-heat-records-climate/index.html

by abhayhegde • 3 years ago

40 71 3 years ago

cnn.com

jacooper• 3 years ago

More news at 11.

Also get ready to start installing air conditioning in your home.

joe__f2• 3 years ago

I saw an article the other day that we've got coal power stations on standby in the UK to power all the new air conditioning units

morkalork• 3 years ago

ooof

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

There is one coal fired plant remaining in the UK (Ratcliffe-on-Soar), roughly 1.5GW total capacity. A substantial portion of UK electricity consumption is now domestic wind, clean hydro from Norway, and low carbon nuclear from France.

Roughly 61% of electricity used came from low carbon sources over the last 12 months. The coal plant in question will be retired next year (October 2024).

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GB

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63976805

https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy-uk-2022.html

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/end-to-coal-power-brought...

PaulKeeble• 3 years ago

The angle the press went with is that solar doesn't work when it's too hot so we need to fire up the coal. Except that day solar produced a third of the UKs power, one of its best days of the year and we didn't actually use coal after all. The entire premise of that press push was a serious distortion of reality.

colechristensen2• 3 years ago

Not trying to deny anything but with the length of records and a random distribution you’d still expect “hottest year” to happen pretty often. (Somebody please do the statistics)

With a very slightly warming planet it would indeed happen quite often.

In other words… setting records means something, but less than one would expect by default.

The more valid statistic is something like n of the last 30 years have been the warmest on record, or something along those lines.

maxlamb• 3 years ago

If you look at the graph of the last 140 years of global average temperatures it definitely does not look random at all.... it just keeps going up https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentWOC/images/globalte...

ChatGTP3• 3 years ago

It must have been so nice to experience the climate in the 1890s, imagine summers which were just nice and short, winters with beautiful, high quality and consistent snow falls and more permanently snow capped mountains.

It must've been quite a beautiful time witness.

goodbyesf3• 3 years ago

They headlined it for emotional impact and clicks. People read "on record" and think it's the hottest the earth has been ever. When it's really 'the hottest' it's been the past few decades.

Also, depending on where and how you measure, it will naturally be 'hotter' because the world is getting more urbanized. And cities are artificially hotter.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/city-hotter-co...

Are they taking more measurements from the artificially warmer cities?

vkou• 3 years ago

They headlined it for emotional impact and clicks. People read "on record" and think it's the hottest the earth has been ever. When it's really 'the hottest' it's been the past few decades.

It's the hottest it's ever been for human civilization, and it's going to keep getting hotter and hotter.

defrost• 3 years ago

I'm having flashbacks to a famous decades old climate denialism talking point heavily pushed by the Koch pro oil media think tanks.

One so famous that it was studied in depth by a prominent US physics professor [1] and (then) climate skeptic using some Koch funding.

The results of the 2013 Berkeley Earth land temperature data analysis on urban heat islands answers your concerns:

    When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

    Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that. [1]

and

    The Berkeley Earth group concluded that the warming trend is real, that over the past 50 years (between the decades of the 1950s and 2000s) the land surface warmed by 0.91±0.05 °C, and their results mirror those obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Hadley Centre, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis, and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

    The study also found that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from these earlier studies. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Muller

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

yongjik2• 3 years ago

People read "on record" and think it's the hottest the earth has been ever.

I really don't get this kind of straw-man complaint. Do you think people care about average temperature of the world during the Paleoproterozoic?

It's like hearing someone saying "Residents scramble as snowfall on Boston breaks record" and then complaining "The entire Boston area was under a mile of ice once!" Yes, we know, and that's not we're talking about.

claytongulick3• 3 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that the sensationalism we see in this sort of reporting is generally far removed from the actual science.

Most of this stuff is built on models that are constantly being improved with more data, or in some cases being skewed to meet a predetermined desired outcome.

IanCal• 3 years ago

with the length of records and a random distribution you’d still expect “hottest year” to happen pretty often. (Somebody please do the statistics)

No you wouldn't, it would be increasingly rare as time went on.

With a very slightly warming planet it would indeed happen quite often.

Yes? The frequency it happens is based on how fast the planet is heating.

okaram• 3 years ago

I'm not sure which random distribution you mean ... But if you assume a normal distribution with constant mean, and, say, 100 years of records, the chances of you still getting the hottest now are very very small

eyelidlessness• 3 years ago

They also keep happening in closer concentration. It’s not like you just break a record once and then the record is settled.

revelio5• 3 years ago

More than you could imagine. Climatology is unique in that records can be "broken" by lower temperatures than previous records.

https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest...

klyrs2• 3 years ago

Indeed, the atmosphere was some 230°C back in the Hadean, and we got along fine... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean#atmosphere

DoreenMichele7• 3 years ago

Methinks humans were not around at that time.

upsidesinclude4• 3 years ago

The earth is in the final stages at the end of an ice age.

It's weird, but for some reason people can't seem to recognize this fact. We exited a major glacial period and have been, for 11000 years, ending an ice age (a period with glacial ice at both polar regions).

CURRENTLY, the period of time we are living in, is considered interglacial despite glaciers still covering significant portions of earth. The expectation is a return to major glaciation. This would be horrible. It is also the predominant condition throughout the history of earth.

Timon33• 3 years ago

It's weird, but for some reason people can't seem to recognize this fact.

Who is not recognizing that fact?

Where people are disagreeing with - and you've heard this before, don't act like this is new - is that us leaving an ice age doesn't explain the rapid rise in temperature we're experiencing. Previous ice ages haven't ended this abruptly. So what does your comment add here?

People keep throwing in things like this as if it was an actual insight instead of a distraction.

DoreenMichele7• 3 years ago

Rather than AC, which just deepens the problem by increasing our energy burn rate, we need more passive solar design. Plus more mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods.

Also: Reduce upholstered furniture, books and similar, take trash out more regularly, remove all cardboard from groceries as soon as you get them home.

ygjb3• 3 years ago

There is nothing that individual consumers can do that will change this. Policy is needed at a national and international level.

DoreenMichele7• 3 years ago

Perhaps. But if you don't want to be a statistic counted among the dead in the next heat wave, I recommend taking your trash out, getting rid of cardboard, etc to make the temp and humidity in your space more bearable.

ccooffee• 3 years ago

Also: Reduce upholstered furniture, books and similar, take trash out more regularly, remove all cardboard from groceries as soon as you get them home.

What? I don't understand what any of these things accomplish, let alone a common element between them.

HeavyStorm• 3 years ago

Yeah, I'm curious as well.

claytongulick3• 3 years ago

Or maybe not? [1]

[1] https://temperature.global/

itsanaccount• 3 years ago

i think its important to mention that the linked page of temperatures links to a podcast called

"debunking the climate change hysteria" by munchie and the bearman

claytongulick3• 3 years ago

Ad hominem attacks are boring, you can do better.

Maybe challenge the methodology?

Or the data sources?

"NOAA Global METARs NOAA One-Minute Observations (OMOs) NBDC Global Buoy Reports MADIS Mesonet Data"

Or should I ignore your comment because your HN handle is "itsanaccount"?

MrVandemar• 3 years ago

After talking about it for thirty, forty years and not doing much more than feeling good about sorting our recycling, we're here at the tipping point.

We need to not be talking about "climate change" anymore.

We are here at "climate collapse".

thatfrenchguy• 3 years ago

We’re more at « global warming » than « climate collapse » right now for most ecosystems.

ygjb3• 3 years ago

Right - global warming as a function of climate change, it's not the climate that is collapsing, it's the ecology that ~8 billion people depend on to survive that is collapsing :)

fiddles pedantically while the world burns

timmg2• 3 years ago

We know and have known the earth is warming. Since there is some natural variability, we don’t set a new record every year. But if there wasn’t, we would. And so it shouldn’t be a surprise to us when we do.

abhayhegde• 3 years ago

It's not concerning that we are setting a new record; we know that's bound to happen. It's the pace of increase that's pushing us towards uncharted territories. We didn't anticipate these rapid changes.

timmg2• 3 years ago

Wasn't the last hottest year like 2016? Seven years ago. Is it really that fast?

We've had a few consecutive years of la nina. This year is the revenge el nino. It was going to be hotter.

revelio5• 3 years ago

It is not uncharted. The Vikings were doing agriculture in Greenland, the Romans grew wine in England as far north as Lincolnshire, bison were roaming at altitudes that cannot be found at today.

There were periods in the past warmer than it is today. Climatologists once knew this, it was uncontroversial. But when they realized they could raise the importance of their field by predicting disaster, this history became problematic and was erased.

https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?Id=BFE4...

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

blownpipeline3• 3 years ago

Anyone who believes cnn at this point I feel sorry for. They’ve discredited themselves numerous times. They and media more generally are known for selling fear and pushing certain narratives because fear sells. And operation mockingbird was never really concluded. Psy ops are now more ubiquitous than ever.

And it’s less hot now than the last few years where I live. And I don’t live in a big city. Big cities are hot as hell, and should be abandoned or completely redesigned because they are unlivable hell holes.

ChatGTP3• 3 years ago

And it’s less hot now than the last few years where I live

That's not how it works.

CNN though, I agree, it's complete trash but climate change is not a "psy op".

blownpipeline3• 3 years ago

Climate change is THE psy op. I know a thing or two about it. I myself was in the climate change camp/cult for a while. The hot weather this summer is driven primarily by the El Nino which is a natural cycle. So yes, we’ll have weird and in some places (especially densely populated cities) hot weather for about 2-5 years, but then I predict temperature will go down.

Greenhouse effect is a third order effect, maybe a second order, but that’s a huge stretch. I am being generous.

Edit: I don’t like being robbed on the ability to reply and being gaslit at the same time. “You posting too fast, slow down, thanks” my ass. If anything, it just gives me more reason to believe that there’s a narrative and any and all dissenting voices are being supressed. Under fair conditions, I’d debate anyone on this subject because as I have said previously, I can see through the bullshit. Consider this my last comment on this subject. I now have to go and save the planet from more psyops, like the war in Ukraine is not a proxy war and was unprovoked. Bye!

kakapo88• 3 years ago

It's not "cnn". This has been widely reported by diverse scientific groups. Countless sources.

And it doesn't matter what the weather is like where you are. We're talking climate here - broad trends over broad areas, over time.

Truly, if some folks don't understand climate change at this point, and fall back to psyops and similar nonsense, there isn't much that can be done for them.

blownpipeline3• 3 years ago

Really? So you say “believe science”? And science is settled? I have been to a bunch of colloquiums on this subject and this science is far from settled. Anthropogenic greenhouse effect is actually a forth order effect, right there after a third order natural greenhouse effect.

And do I need to remind you which ones are the first and second order effects?

And psy ops are definitely effective, just look around yourself. Or at the mirror.

cdumler• 3 years ago

If you have ever had to deal with an air conditioner isn't cooling because of low freon, you'd know that the problem is because the coils get.. too.. cold. They get so cold that water in the air freezes around the coils to be the point there is little air flow possible. Why?

When the freon is low, the freon expands too much into the coils. More expansion, more temperature drop in the coils. Additionally, the compressor has too little freon to compress to sent out to the radiator. The local coil's temperature has gone down, but the overall temperature of the system has gone up. This is the difference between weather (local) and climate (overall average). The weather of the coil is cooler, the climate of the A/C system is hotter.

Global warming is creating changes in the energy flow, both atmospheric and oceanic. Consequently, you may have locally cooler temperatures because hotter temperatures in other create blocks energy movement that would otherwise heat your area.

thefurdrake2• 3 years ago

And it’s less hot now than the last few years where I live.

It's a good thing that the statement being made isn't about your locality. I'm confused as to how this addresses the topic, since no one is making claims about all localities heating up at a universal rate, and the only people spreading the fallacy that climate change means "everywhere heating all at once equally" are the people who know very little about the topic in the first place...

But hey, the temp is lower where you live so I guess the topic's closed!

orangesitebad69• 3 years ago

I will do exactly as you say, and delete my account nd never come to this nasty site. Your wish is my command. But in all seriousness this site is very awful and mostly filled with like minded close minded intellectuals that are pushing the mainstream narrative and cannot stand any real diversity of opinion. So rhe joke is on you, funny guy. You should go join a circus.

Global heat in ‘uncharted territory’: 2023 could be the hottest year on record

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