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Earth

Earth Has Its Warmest February Ever - the 9th Record-Setting Month in a Row (axios.com) 91

Posted by EditorDavid from the weather-or-not dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: The Earth just observed its warmest February, setting a monthly record for the ninth time in a row, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday.

The unrelenting and exceptional global warmth — fueled by a combination of human-caused warming and the El Niño climate pattern — has spanned both land and ocean areas since June. It has scientists worried about the planet crossing a critical climate threshold and prospects for an active Atlantic hurricane season. The month's average global air temperature of 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.3 degrees Fahrenheit) was 0.12 degrees (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous warmest February in 2016.

The warmth of the last 12-month period is unprecedented in modern records, coming in at 1.56 degrees (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels... Scientists fear that tipping points, such as those that could lead to catastrophic sea level rises or the collapse of critical ocean circulations, will become more likely to be reached if the Earth's temperature remains near or above that threshold for multiple years.
Axios adds: This is significant, since these 12 months exceeded the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree target for a full year. However, the pact is aimed at averting multiple decades above that level, meaning the target hasn't yet been officially breached. Europe was especially warm compared to average during February, along with central and northwest North America, much of South America, Africa and western Australia, Copernicus found.
The Washington Post notes that in the United States, "more than 200 locations in the Midwest and Northeast set records for winter warmth."

They also quote a weather historian who posted on social media that "We are witnessing something extraordinary and unprecedented. Several thousands of records pulverized all over the world in a matter of hours, with margins never seen before."
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Earth Has Its Warmest February Ever - the 9th Record-Setting Month in a Row More

Earth Has Its Warmest February Ever - the 9th Record-Setting Month in a Row

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  • The earth wants to be hotter as it makes for good news. "Making the solar system great again...!".

    • The earth wants to be hotter as it makes for good news.

      If you're "good news" isn't about mass extinctions, resource conflicts, and human migration like nothing we've seen before then it's not really the news.

  • Warmest EVER! Ever. Ever.

  • But I live for the day when your gas car's tires fuse to the pavement. Deny THAT.

    • Re:Whatever you want to believe.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @02:14PM (#64302797)
      It could worse than that. Huge chunks of our infrastructure is designed to operate at temperature ranges that were determined last century. What could happen is that large urban areas will get heat waves hot enough to a) melt the roads and b) crash the power grid. Millions of people with no AC and no way to escape the heat . Slowly cooking to death. At wet-bulb temps above 95C, you die. Period. End of discussion. No amount of willpower or prayer will save you. If a multimillion urban area is involved, a rescue effort might not even be feasible.

      The deniers will scoff at this as doom mongering, but they should look up temp ranges for various blacktop road surfaces, check the history of heat-driven power outages, and then read up on the response of the human body to various wetbulb temperstures. A body count in the hundreds of thousands or millions is not implausible.

      This is probably the magnitude of effect that’s necessary before we take action. Anything less will be largely ignored.

  • Hey, relax (Score:4, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @01:32PM (#64302697)

    Yeah, it may be the hottest February so far, but only 'til next February.

  • Fun times.

    I'm sure many others in first world countries have noticed a very slow and subtle reduction in different food products in supermarkets over the last decade or so, as well as price increases that can't just be explained by cost of living after pandemic.

    It sometimes feels that we're going back toward seasonal produce, but it's far more worrying that that.

    I live in the United Kingdom, where approaching 46% of our food is imported.

    A huge amount of this comes from Europe.

    Some of the biggest food produc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      noticed a very slow and subtle reduction in different food products in supermarkets over the last decade or so

      That's due to the vegans crying to management to remove meat-based products from their inventory. Or they'll shop elsewhere. The ones who insist that stores carry "vegan bolognese sauce" because they are too stupid to reach for the marinara.

      The good thing about all this: Butcher shops are making a comeback. Because whiny tofu-eaters just don't shop there.

  • They've understood the severity of global warming and are making sacrifices, the meme: https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
  • We are fucked. Get ready for millions of people migrating north from the equator. That is what we should be planning on. Mitigation as opposed to prevention.

    • Re:Northern Migration (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @05:52PM (#64303229) Homepage Journal

      Climate change will put stress on societies. Societies with attributes that help them deal with stress -- ones that are rich, have low levels of corruption, have political stability, have a low GINI coefficient -- will get through it fine. But societies that are vulnerable to destablization will generate refugees in enormous numbers.

      If you want to see the template, look at Syria. They had a multi-year drought, which displaced much of the rural population into the cities. There was not jobs in the city for them, so they became dependent on government food aid while the young men were targeted for indoctrination by political/religious radicals. Then there was a crop failure in Ukraine and Russia that led to a spike in global wheat prices, and the whole thing blew up.

      If the same events happened to Norway, there would be something they'd probably call a "crisis", but it wouldn't look like Syria.

      • I really like your optimism which I find completely wrong as well. How long do you think this richness, low corruption and stability will last with multi-year weather events, displacement of rural population , no jobs etc. in Norway or anywhere else. I will give you the template we already have, when Germany was not having a good time, WW2 happened. It doesnt take much for all these social constructs and its "coefficients" to collapse once you have hungry people.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          You have to grade "doing fine" on a curve. Rich and powerful countries will be able to afford megaproject mitigations, to purchase resources on the international market, or simply to *take* them.

          For example, it's entirely feasible for New York City, a region that doesn't grow its own food or manufacture anything, to build a tide gate system in the East River and Hudson to protect Manhattan and it's profitable service economy. In present terms it would be almost inconceivably costly, perhaps thirty to fort

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Washington State is fucked. They're moving North for the climate. And West for the free fentanyl.

  • Sure wasn't the February temps in my neck of the woods. .22 degrees warmer? Maybe 20 degrees warmer here. (PA)

    The last week in January/first week of February are traditionally the coldest of the year, and it was 40's and fifties during the day, we had one day it dipped to around 12 degrees, then rebounded above freezing - but the rest of that period, it might dip to only 30 for a few hours at night.

    Then it started cooking. Upper 60's during several days. We had some pretty strong thunderstorms, and e

    • I'm in PA too. I planted grass after last growing season. It sprouted in Feb. That was somewhat surprising. Funny, we decided to take a winter trip to the beach (OC,MD) and of course we picked that weekend in January that was probably the only cold weekend we had all year.
  • But ias it really necessary to post this story every month with just an updated month name and temp It's not news any more. Do a summary every six months with the number of record monts in the previous 6 just so we can keep track of how fucked we are, there are enugh other outlets that seam to give us day by day updates. But I'm ranting again, there goes my karma oh well.

  • The Earth is BILLIONS of years old. We have accurate temperature readings for SOME of it dating back a hundred years, really spotty measurements from a few areas dating back a thousand years. And only uncalibrated extrapolations from trees, ice, and mud before that. That's a temperature record of perhaps a fifth of a millionth of the age of the Earth - NOT statistically significant.

    Additionally, we have archeological evidence of Antarctica and Siberia being green in the distant past, rather than covered in

    • Shoul try to be honest to your self first.
      Then you can try judging honesty of scientist or jouranlists.

      Hints:
      Billion years ago, the [planet was a molten rock of magma.
      No idea what that has to do with climate, or climate science.
      The planet had no atmosphere, and hence no interesting climate.

      Antarctica was on a different latitude when it was "green" a little bit south of the equator.
      Siberia was green when earth axis was tilted differently.

      Again: both has nothing to do with climate, especially not the current

  • these 12 months exceeded the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree target for a full year. However, the pact is aimed at averting multiple decades above that level

    This is the most important line in TFS (and TFA). This is a weather report, not climate. I think only climate scientists really understand the scope of what climate is. Everyone else is fretting about daily weather, yearly weather, and stuff that just, AFAIK as a layman, isn't climate. The dust bowl [wikipedia.org] is a thing. Wasn't climate. It was a long catastrophic weather occurrence.

    That said, if we don't do something now -- and that means not ruling out mitigation strategies out according to political preferences --

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