Germany's Temperature Record Smashed as Europe's Heat Wave Intensifies (cnn.com) 169
A reader shares a report: Germany recorded its highest-ever June temperature on Wednesday, as much of continental Europe contends with a major heat wave. The German Weather Service said the mercury hit 38.6 degrees Celsius (101.5 Fahrenheit) at 2:50 p.m. local time in Coschen, on the country's border with Poland. The previous record stood at 38.5 Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit), which was measured in 1947 in Buhlertal, which lies close to France. The longevity of the previous record -- 72 years -- shows just how unusual and intense the current heat wave is in Europe. Any sign of quick relief is not on cards either.
Climate scientists have warned that heat waves such as this one are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe because of the climate crisis. Meteo-France, the French national weather authority, said the frequency of such events is expected to double by 2050. Temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) are forecast in a number of major cities across the continent, with meteorologists warning that higher humidity could make it feel even hotter. Further reading: Temperatures in France cross 45C threshold for first time ever.
Climate scientists have warned that heat waves such as this one are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe because of the climate crisis. Meteo-France, the French national weather authority, said the frequency of such events is expected to double by 2050. Temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) are forecast in a number of major cities across the continent, with meteorologists warning that higher humidity could make it feel even hotter. Further reading: Temperatures in France cross 45C threshold for first time ever.
Climate scientists have warned that heat waves... (Score:1, Informative)
are due to climate change, but cold snaps confuse "weather" with "climate".
Re: Climate scientists have warned that heat wave (Score:5, Insightful)
His point is idiotic. Climate change is about mean *global* temperature, not about localized climate and weather conditions. Overall, surface temperatures are rising, but that doesn't mean every single spot on the face of the Earth sees its temperatures rise. It's a big place with a lot of localized variability. It's like arguing that a boiling pot of water isn't actually boiling because there are thermal gradients in the water in the pot.
Re: Climate scientists have warned that heat wave (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. There's no getting around thermodynamics. Climate denial is nothing more than pure sophistry. The universe functions on a set of laws, and thermodynamics are among them. Increase the thermal equilibrium of a system, and things will get hotter. We can debate what exactly the effects will be, and that can be hard to do in a system as complex as the Earth's climate, but to argue that increasing CO2 concentrations in the lower atmosphere has no effect, that more heat and other forms of energy don't inevitably have substantial effects on climate is to basically deny about two hundred years of some of the most rigorously demonstrated science known to humanity is either extraordinary self-delusion or out and out dishonesty.
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Some people just can't understand scale and think a few billion itty bitty people won't effect the planet in a big way. Delusional? Maybe just ignorant.
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Then you deny thermodynamics. That makes you no better than a flat earther.
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What is the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere?
See Joos et al. 2001. The decay of a pulse of CO2 with time t is given by a0 + sum where i=1..3 of ai e^ (-t/i) where a0 = 0.217, a1 = 0.259, a2 = 0.338, a3 = 0.186, 1 = 172.9 years, 2 = 18.51 years, and 3 = 1.186 years, for t less than 1,000 years. Not so easy to show math on slashdot. All those i's are subscript.
What is the heat-trapping sensitivity of CO2?
Delta F=5.35*ln {C/C0}Wm ^-2
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The way I explain it in the GW context is that GW adds more energy to the planet's weather system. A more energetic system has larger fluctuations. Think of a bobblehead on your car dashboard shaking its head up and down as you drive on a smooth road, vs a rou
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No, his point is right. If you're going to pull the "local vs global weather" card whenever someone points to localized cold snaps as evidence against GW, then they can pull the same card when you point to localized heat waves as evidence for GW.
No one is citing this heat wave as proof of global warming. Global mean temperature is rising. We have measurements. It's just a fact.
What they are saying is "heat waves such as this one are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe because of the climate crisis. "
Record heat is a consequence of rising temperatures. That shouldn't really be controversial.
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The current article is about a temperature measurement which supposedly breaks the record maximum for Germany by 0.1 degrees C or about 0.2 degrees F. After 72 years it's hardly surprising that a fractionally higher temperature was registered - even if one rules out the likelihood that the less precise instruments of 1947 may have been a tiny bit wrong.
The parent declares that
His point is idiotic. Climate change is about mean *global* temperature, not about localized climate and weather conditions.
Yet the article, and this whiole thread, is about a tiny - almost indetectable - increase in the maximum after the best part of a cen
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Data and links are provided.
You choose not to be even the slightest bit curious.
Cultist is what you are called.
Re: Climate scientists have warned that heat wave (Score:5, Insightful)
[...]Don't bother impugning the source. All the links and data are provided.
No bother at all.
Some of the links and data are provided, but not all. The data that is provided is taken out of context. Yes, the raw temperature data was reinterpreted a few years ago, but this was to compensate for changes in how the raw data was gathered. For example, changes to the time of day that temperature measurements were taken or weather stations that were moved.
If you were to actually read the papers rather than some lunatic's opinion of reality, you would see that the reinterpretation was both justified and verified with empirical testing. You know, science.
I'll save you the trouble of searching for the paper at the heart of the "controversy" you bring up. It's here [wiley.com].
Moral of the story: Don't be a putz.
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If you were to actually read the papers rather than some lunatic's opinion of reality, you would see that the reinterpretation was both justified and verified with empirical testing.
It's quite a bit worse than that. The lunatic in question is comparing apples to oranges and shouting "fraud" when they don't match: "What has been presented as a "tampering" is in fact a plot of two different datasets, representing two different things." [blogspot.com]
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Severe cold snaps are indeed increasing as well due to climate change. Just ask North America how intense the past two or three winters have been.
It's just head-in-the-sand/snow conservatives that like to go "oh, it's global warming but it's -40c outside, you can't explain that!"
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*half of North America. The other half (generally the western half) has had mild winters the last few years.
Re:Climate scientists have warned that heat waves. (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the reason for the intense cold snaps is because of Arctic outflow. The Arctic is warming and the cold air that usually stays there in the winter is flowing southward.
This is the problem with just looking at one region and saying "Fuck, it was cold last winter, therefore AGW is false!" when in fact the reason it was so fucking cold is because the Arctic is getting so fucking warm.
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I wouldn't trust a Martian to tell us how climate works here on Earth!
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I wouldn't trust a Martian to tell us how climate works here on Earth!
Don't worry. He has the Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator ready to take care of all of Earth's problems.
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It's funny that you say it that way because I was just talking to my northern liberal friends who were proclaiming just how downright mild the past few winters in New Hampshire and Massachusetts have been versus their childhoods.
Unfortunately, climate change has taken on such a confusing meaning that it morphs to meet whatever criteria is needed at the time to "prove" it. Not hot enough? Go measure in the center of an asphalt heap or on a runway tarmac, and if that's not good enough then adjust the temperat
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Re:Climate scientists have warned that heat waves. (Score:5, Interesting)
Severe cold snaps are indeed increasing as well due to climate change. Just ask North America how intense the past two or three winters have been.
It's just head-in-the-sand/snow conservatives that like to go "oh, it's global warming but it's -40c outside, you can't explain that!"
I have a simple analogy.
Consider an old, energy-inefficient refrigerator with its doors wide open in a big closed room. Measure the room temperature with the fridge turned off to get a baseline reading then turn it on.
Refrigerators work by pumping heat out of the cabinet and dissipating it through a radiator at the back, so the inside gets cooler while the outside gets warmer. However, old ones were very inefficient. According to this page [michaelbluejay.com] (found via a quick web search), a pre-1976 fridge can use 5 times the energy of a modern CEE Tier 3 one (which is also not 100% efficient due to the pesky laws of thermodynamics) to achieve the same internal temperature. Where does the excess energy go? It is dissipated as heat.
So this fridge will be simultaneously cooling the room (via the open cabinet) and heating it (via the radiator and other heat dissipation), but the heating effect will be stronger than the cooling due to the inefficiencies. The average temperature of the room will rise, giving us "global warming". However, the temperature *inside* the fridge cabinet will drop (air is not a good heat conductor), giving us "local cooling".
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It's sad that we need to resort to pre-school levels of explanations for half the idiots who read slashdot these days.
Re:Climate scientists have warned that heat waves. (Score:4)
I can't help wonder if some of the records we see now are because we are actually having less dirt in the emissions from vehicles and powerplants compared to the 60's and 70's. All the particles emitted then may have acted as "seeds" for cloud formation.
Re:Climate scientists have warned that heat waves. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't help wonder if some of the records we see now are because we are actually having less dirt in the emissions from vehicles and powerplants compared to the 60's and 70's. All the particles emitted then may have acted as "seeds" for cloud formation.
That is actually an interesting point, though I don't think in this instance it has any bearing.
I remember a documentary I watched many years ago about the few days they shut down air travel after 9/11, and the fact that there was much less pollution from that, the amount of solar radiation was greater.
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Yes, but to a very small degree. Even scientists in the 60s and 70s understood the effects of particulates in the atmosphere; however, the effects of increased CO2 plus the positive feedback from increasing temperatures overwhelms the potential cooling effects of atmospheric particulates.
The real problem with increasing global temperatures is the positive feedback. A simple example is that increasing global temperatures melt glaciers -- retreating glaciers expose more dark surface on the Earth -- more dark
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Which in 100 years will mean jack squat with the changes in technology.
Seriously. No, seriously. Indeed any policy that slows this down is a net loss (for you medical people, an outcomes-based analysis.)
I am ready for my censorious downmod, Mr. DeMille.
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Which in 100 years will mean jack squat with the changes in technology.
Yeah, because we will have the latest and greatest in air conditioning.
Only, thermodynamics guarantees that A/C will produce a net increase in temperatures overall.
But that will only affect those poor schmucks who can't afford it.
So fuck them.
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Climate scientists have long warned the climate change will produce both additional and more severe heat wave and cold snaps. Take off the denier blinders.
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It's even got a name in science. "Just so stories".
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Err no. Not a single climate scientist anywhere in the world has claimed that. That's your just your brain failing to function which is quite common among ACs.
Re:Climate scientists have warned that heat waves. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's talk about the difference between hot and cold. Climate change is driven by solar radiation, and that is at a minimum in the winter. So there's a built in asymmetry: you can't directly compare anomalous heat in the summer, which is driven by CO2 trapping fierce amounts of solar radiation, with cold in the winter. However CO2 *does* trap *some* heat in the winter, so where did it go?
If you looked at maps of global temperatures during those recent US cold snaps, you'd have had your answer: Greenland, Svalbard, and Siberia were all having record-setting winter heat. Since they get very little sunlight, that heat came from temperate places like the continental US. In fact if you plotted those temperatures you would clearly have seen the intrusion of warm air into the Arctic, displacing the cold air there southward. As a whole both the globe and the Northern Hemisphere were experiencing unusually high *net* heating above normal.
Now if you look at the present temperature anomaly [climatereanalyzer.org], you'll see as you always do a patchwork of hot spots and cold spots -- that's weather. But the hot spots are vast and intense, the cold spots are smaller and less intense. Add it all up and the total temperature anomaly for the Norther Hemisphere, at this very moment, is +0.7 C above the mean. The Arctic is at a stunning 1.3 degrees above normal.
In other words the local heat in Europe is part of a global weather pattern, and that global weather pattern is part of an ongoing trend of climate change.
Extreme weather patterns are exactly what models have predicted for decades now. Whether it's hot or cold locally is immaterial, it's the fact that record setting events have become an almost annual event. That is as certain a sign of climate change as it is certain that you won't win the lottery.
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Which predictions are you speaking of?
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why haven't we seen the extreme weather yet?
We have: https://nca2014.globalchange.g... [globalchange.gov]
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As I just got through explaining, a heat wave or a cold snap in a single place like Europe of the US does not mean that the entire globe is hotter or colder. However a generally hotter globe will generate both additional heat waves and cold snaps.
Don't fixate on the word "warming". We're talking a change on the order of 2C; that's about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit; that's barely noticeable as a local phenomenon. However, if you calculate the number of joules it takes to raise the entire troposphere by 2C, the
France records all-time hottest temperature (Score:4, Informative)
The mercury rose to over 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in France, making it the hottest temperature logged since records began. Meanwhile, a wildfire in Spain has destroyed thousands of hectares of land.
Re:France records all-time hottest temperature (Score:5, Funny)
I can attest to that. I was in Scotland last week and for an hour it was actually sunny. Climate change is hitting the region hard!
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I was there last week as well, in Edinburgh. I had to roll up the sleeves on my sweatshirt more than once.
The horror.
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It was horrible. Hundreds dried...
I fixed your typo.
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The mercury rose to over 45 degrees Celsius
Modern variant: platinum atoms vibrated hard enough to raise electrical resistance by 17% over standard value.
France hits record temperature of 45.1C (Score:5, Informative)
France has hit its highest recorded temperature - 45.1C (113.2F) - amid a heatwave in Europe that has claimed several lives.
The new record was measured in the southern town of Villevieille. The previous record was 44.1C during a heatwave in 2003 that killed thousands.
Health Minister Agnès Buzyn has said "everyone is at risk" from the high temperatures.
France's weather service has issued an unprecedented red alert for four areas.
"Smashed"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I understand that the record was broken, and it's likely linked to climate change, but part of the reason it's hard to maintain credibility in the face of the general populace is that you're referring to breaking a 72 year old record by 0.1 degrees C as the record being "smashed".
That's a rethorical form (Score:2)
Re:"Smashed"? History of Heat Waves (Score:2)
https://www.history.com/news/h... [history.com]
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'Smashed' was CNN's choice of words. As an American news organization, they are prone to sensationalist headlines. The original says "Warmster und sonnigster Juni in Deutschland seit Messbeginn".
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My thoughts exactly
FAKE NEWS alert!!!! For the few that read beyond the headline. .2F on a 101 base is no where near smashing
Isn't that a .05% increase?
Oh, Shiver me timbers it's a hot one today!
The Slashdot editors are in a rush this AM, don't know how this rates as news....
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No, it's a 0.2% increase. 0.2/100 is NOT 0.05%...
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No, it's a 0.03% increase. You can only (meaningfully) do percentages on an absolute scale.
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My favorite CNN misleading headline was after the big tsunami some years back.
"Sea rise from climate change will be 30 feet just like the tsunami!"
In the fine print many paragraphs in they state it won't be all at once but over 100-300 years.
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I'm a firm believer of climate science and have no doubt that climate change is real. But as a person with a degree in English, I have to warn against hyperbole. "SMASHED" is a particular word with a particular meaning. Don't abuse it. That's how you cry wolf.
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Is using the term 'crisis' counter-productive? (Score:2)
Apparently the term to use now is 'climate crisis', which it most certainly is, but I'm wondering if we're all hearing the word 'crisis' used multiple times a day if it's going to lose meaning, and dull the term?
I get that we need to do something (and I try to as much as I can: vegan almost 30yrs, I don't drive, avoid travel, minimize consumption, no kids, etc, etc), but I'm concerned that if this becomes the lexicon, it's going to weaken the term, and people won't bat an eye when another crisis is highligh
Re:Is using the term 'crisis' counter-productive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Global warming and "the crisis" are related but two different things. Global warming makes the globe, hence the name, warmer, hence the name, over time, due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are mostly triggered by CO2. ...
The crisis is: at the moment people are dying. Often preventable. The crisis is that firefighters and ambulances are in high demand. the crisis is that schools need to close, that farmers can not work, that energy consumption is increasing and feeding back into the global warming loop.
The crisis is manyfold, and it is what we are fighting actually right now. And not the long term attempt to reduce CO2 emissions.
It is a crisis if a pond or lake or even river gets so war that you have huge amounts of dead fish to dispose off
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The crisis is: at the moment people are dying. Often preventable. The crisis is that firefighters and ambulances are in high demand. the crisis is that schools need to close, that farmers can not work, that energy consumption is increasing and feeding back into the global warming loop. The crisis is manyfold, and it is what we are fighting actually right now. And not the long term attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. It is a crisis if a pond or lake or even river gets so war that you have huge amounts of dead fish to dispose off ...
Yes, that is how I see crisis being used in this context.
It is a crisis because it negatively impacts humanity.
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I see your point, and agree with the proper usage, but I've seen interviews where it's being encouraged to use 'climate crisis' in place of 'climate change', so it's effectively a synonym. That's what I'm concerned about..
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My local city just declared a "climate crisis". Their answer is to run the city's diesel bus fleet around more often, as though that will suddenly make buses more attractive to car drivers.
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The Guardian (I believe) has changed how they reference these issues. The reason, as I recall, was that the current wording that we use, "climate change," doesn't carry enough weight about the impact of what's going to happen in the future. If we wait till wide spread migration, droughts, famine, species extinction, and mass ecosystem death; are happening left and right to change it to "climate crisis" then it'll be too late to actually change anything.
Earth's climate isn't a speed boat, its a hulking, mas
You Always Blame Climate Change (Score:1)
Meanwhile the North Eastern USA has been exceptionally chilly with too much rain.
In 2011, Climate Scientists had been warning that the Great Lakes were low and Climate Change is the reason.
Alarms Raised in 2013:
https://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/2013/02/climate_change_lowering_great.html
Not uniform (Score:1, Troll)
Meanwhile the continental United States has been enjoying one of the mildest springs in decades, and summer daily average temperatures noticeably lower than normal. Temperatures have been below the 25th percentile for much of June, both daily highs and lows. The polar vortex is tilted in US favor this year, and against Europe.
Europe is getting US weather, and they deserve it. They're snide about how much energy Americans use. Well this is the reason why. US summers are normally very hot, so Americans u
Re:Not uniform (Score:4, Insightful)
US summers are normally very hot, so Americans use a lot of energy for air conditioning. Now perhaps Europe will understand why.
You are an double idiot.
First: European summers are _always_ just as hot as americans. WTF: we live on the same hemisphere of the globe.
Second: having "hot" summers is not a reason to waste so much energy for nothing. Your energy is cheap, otherwise you already had insulated your house instead of wasting so much energy in AC.
Record broken, does not mean European summers are suddenly warmer than american ones, you seem to be a retard.
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The United States extends to a much lower latitude than Europe does. Many of the states of the United States are in the same latitudes as Algeria, Libya, and Egypt.
In addition, the ocean, as well as ocean currents, play a large role in climate. As a result, much Europe generally enjoys more stable temperatures.
Average it all out, and the United States is much hotter than Europe.
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The USA has every biome on earth represented within its borders, a quality which is to my knowledge unique to us. So unless Europe has some deserts I haven't heard of, no your summers don't get as hot.
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So unless Europe has some deserts I haven't heard of, no your summers don't get as hot.
Spain has deserts, Greece has deserts. I would not wonder if Itally has a desert I have not heard off. Portugal has deserts.
At some point "latitude" gets irrelevant. For US it is relevant that central states far away from the coast have so called continental climate.
Regarding Europe, you as an Amerian have to consider what you count as Europe. By our definition it reaches east till the Ural mountains. That is as hot as an
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You are an double idiot.
Right. "an double idiot". Check a mirror.
First: European summers are _always_ just as hot as americans. WTF: we live on the same hemisphere of the globe.
Which has fuck all to do with anything. Weather is regional, right down to local microclimates. You do not have the same weather as the US, ever. Idiot.
Record broken, does not mean European summers are suddenly warmer than american ones, you seem to be a retard.
No, reality means this summer is suddenly warmer than the American one. I didn't say anything about trends. In fact, I implicitly acknowledged that normally American summers are hotter than European ones. Fucking fool can't even fucking read.
This is why I despise your religion and all you climate alarmists. I
Re:Not uniform (Score:4, Insightful)
They're snide about how much energy Americans use. Well this is the reason why. US summers are normally very hot, so Americans use a lot of energy for air conditioning. Now perhaps Europe will understand why.
No we've always understood why. You're horridly wasteful air-conditioning poorly insulated houses because of your dirt cheap energy rather than taking a more sane approach to the problem. Then you double down on your stupidity making it cold enough indoors that it's worth wearing a jumper in the middle of summer.
I would suggest you invest in some socialised healthcare so you can cure your braindamage.
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No joke. When I visit the US during hot summers, I have to make sure to carry around a hoodie or sweatshirt, so I can put it on when I go inside somewhere.
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News for sunbathers, stuff that's hot (Score:2)
Here in my mom's basement, it's quite balmy.
Terrible time to visit (Score:3)
It's not just the temperature but the rain as well. Last year at this time a guide told us the Rhein river was so low they could not dock at many towns. The variability in the rain is getting worse.
Re:Terrible time to visit (Score:4, Informative)
I picked a terrible time to make my first visit to Germany. It was still 100F at 9pm Wednesday and very few places have air conditioning.
Protip: I the city you are in has a University, go to the rare books section of the University Library . . . they always have enough air conditioning.
Or, if you are an IT guy . . . the data center in the basement is also comfortably cool.
Re: Terrible time to visit (Score:2)
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Actually, it is most likely is cool but you consider it to warm as you are trained wrong.
A 27C building in a hot summer is considered cool.
Seriously, the only AC places are shopping malls, and even there you need good luck.
Re: Terrible time to visit (Score:2)
Re:Terrible time to visit (Score:4, Interesting)
That's actually what makes it terrible. The places are temperate enough that air conditioning isn't actually required - save maybe a day or two. So they don't actually build with heat in mind - usually the places are cool enough that they are designed to keep the heat in, though.
That's why it may hit a mere 86F (30C) which is terrible in some places but perfectly normal in others. Places that normally get that hot or hotter will generally have adapted to it and would all be equipped with AC. Places that don't get that hot will generally not have AC. Likewise, places that get that hot generally don't get all that cold in the winter, and would make even 50F (10C) feel "freezing" while others (like those temperate places) simply toss on a light jacket and enjoy the outdoors.
I went to Europe in the spring, and it was getting close what would be summer like temperatures to me. Which was fine, except they didn't turn on the AC yet in one hotel we stayed, so we had to leave a window open ona 2nd floor hotel room in Rome. On the other hand, there were many inquiries as to why I wore a T-shirt when everyone else had a jacket on. Many inquired if I felt cold or was too poor or something.
Then again, I could pick out the Canadians on tour as well - being in equally light clothes in what people considered "cool" weather.
So if I understand correctly (Score:2)
...all the fear about derailing the Gulf Stream (you know, that which keeps a 45N Lat Europe rather temperate and warmer than it should be) is overblown, then?
For my money, maybe this will finally motivate Europeans to maybe install an airconditioner or three.
Silly headline (Score:2)
The temperature record was 'smashed' by 0.1 deg c, using a different type of thermometer, probably in a different location.
the high temperatures are not the only point that' (Score:1)
Freak hail storm strikes Mexican city of Guadalaja (Score:1)
At least six neighborhoods in the city outskirts woke up to ice pellets up to two meters deep.
https://ph.news.yahoo.com/frea... [yahoo.com]