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Earth

Europe Baked in 'Extreme Heat Stress' Pushing Temperatures To Record Highs (theguardian.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the terrible-signs dept.
Scorching weather has baked Europe in more days of "extreme heat stress" than its scientists have ever seen. The Guardian: Heat-trapping pollutants that clog the atmosphere helped push temperatures in Europe last year to the highest or second-highest levels ever recorded, according to the EU's Earth-watching service Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Europeans are suffering with unprecedented heat during the day and are stressed by uncomfortable warmth at night. The death rate from hot weather has risen 30% in Europe in two decades, the joint State of the Climate report from the two organisations found.

"The cost of climate action may seem high," said WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo, "but the cost of inaction is much higher." The report found that temperatures across Europe were above average for 11 months of 2023, including the warmest September since records began. The hot and dry weather fuelled large fires that ravaged villages and spewed smoke that choked far-off cities. The blazes that firefighters battled were particularly fierce in drought-stricken southern countries such as Portugal, Spain and Italy. Greece was hit by the largest wildfire recorded in the EU, which burned 96,000 hectares of land, according to the report. Heavy rain also led to deadly floods. Europe was about 7% wetter in 2023 than the average over the last three decades, the report found, and one-third of its river network crossed the "high" flood threshold. One-sixth hit "severe" levels.
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Europe Baked in 'Extreme Heat Stress' Pushing Temperatures To Record Highs More

Europe Baked in 'Extreme Heat Stress' Pushing Temperatures To Record Highs

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  • Sounds about right (Score:3)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Monday April 22, 2024 @04:31PM (#64415582) Homepage
    We've had our first few dry/sunny days this year in Ireland over the weekend. Makes sense that the rest of the world would be burning so

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      I wish. It's fucking snowing again here in Southern Finland. Can we have some of that "heat stress" please? I had plans to have some fun with football today. Don't think it's happening.

      Also was hilarious how quite a few idiots believed the popular narrative and started changing their summer tyres earlier, because late winters aren't a thing any more because of global warming.

      Now they're clogging insurance company emergency numbers, because skating on summer tyres is awesome until you encounter a tree or a d

      • A month ago it was freezing. 2 weeks ago, we hit the 30s (Celsius, that's like the 90s in backwards units). We're now back to freezing temperatures. But don't you worry, we should be back in the 30s come May.

        You want to call that normal?

        • > You want to call that normal?

          It's called weather and thats what I've seen since 1980

          • If it makes you feel better, call it a "weather crisis". Tomeeto, tomaato.

            What matters is that the whole shit is getting out of hand as we're watching.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          It is normal. That's what it was since we started measuring weather.

          The motte and bailey argument is real. You can't justify not believing in doomsday cult version of global warming because of weather because weather is obviously not climate. That's ridiculous.

          But you're encouraged to use weather that supports it as an argument for it. To the point where TV newscasts have almost universally changed color palettes of their weather programs to make what was previously shown as green in red. That's self eviden

          • I've now been on this planet for a fair amount of time. Personally, I haven't seen this before. And let's be honest here, weather in my country has always been chaotic in Spring.

            But going 0 - 30 - 0 is pretty much unheard of.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              And that is how a lot of cults get you. Human tendency to note the exceptional new thing and give it extreme attention when noted, but only do this once, plus selective memory that only collects things it associates with extreme negativity.

              Because that's an evolved trait. Those who didn't have it, failed to adapt to things like new predator entering the forest you're in and got selected out of the gene pool.

              Completely not unique to Green cult. Almost every religious cult uses this, to the point where curren

    • Still not exactly warm though.

  • It's coming for the Tropics and the US (Score:3)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @04:47PM (#64415626) Journal

    Looks pretty hot everywhere.

    Tropics (equatoral):
    https://www.miragenews.com/unp... [miragenews.com]

    US:
    https://www.foxweather.com/wea... [foxweather.com]

    The ocean is still at record heat levels as well:
    https://climatereanalyzer.org/... [climatereanalyzer.org]

    Ugh. It was a very nice day today, to be appreciated.

    • Re:It's coming for the Tropics and the US (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WeaselCom ( 6999002 ) on Monday April 22, 2024 @05:08PM (#64415682)

      It's coming for those who cant afford to buy their way out of the problem, the wealthy with the power to actually fix it have no desire to fix it since it doesn't affect them.. Until its far to late.

      • Look at how many people on Slashdot jump on these articles to post about how it's all a hoax or whatever. It's not just the wealthy, and I doubt they're all part of a paid social manipulation campaign. It's morons. We have hordes of useful idiots holding us back in addition to the much smaller number of elites with entrenched interests in the current state of affairs.

        • Quite true.

          The useful idiots are usually choosing their view or action based on a perceived (often irrational or miss-informed) fear of something.

          The wealthy via politics and advertising control and deliver fear, and use it to drive the decisions of useful idiots to behave in ways that benefit them.

          General comment, not directed at anyone: No matter how small or otherwise insignificant your or our choices are, doing the right thing matters, even on small levels, every day. Or to put it another way, don't let

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          It's not morons.

          It's people overwhelmed with multiple crisis scenarios that they can't handle. Most of us wish for a stable society and environment because it makes it easier to plan a future. You wouldn't build a house if you're not sure it's still going to be there in five years.

          Calling people morons instead of understanding the actual problem is also a way to avoid looking at it too closely, probably because the complexity is overwhelming to you, too. Easier to just call people morons and be done with it

          • Re:It's coming for the Tropics and the US (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @04:32AM (#64416730)

            Aren't the people who poop on climate science the same who usually lament that people care way, way too much about the fee-fees of people today and that they should just grow a pair and toughen up.

            So toughen up, morons!

          • No, they're morons.

            I am overwhelmed by them, but not because I lack the ability to understand them. There are simply so many of them and they are dedicated not only to not adapting, but to holding everyone else back with them.

            Morons. Maybe not by medical definition, but close enough that it is a descriptively useful term.

            • I think there was a story here a while back, though I read the referenced article even before that.
              The article divided people into 4 groups. I forgot their exact terminology, but it was along the lines of:
              A. Smart - do things that help themselves and others
              B. helpless - do things that harm themselves to help others
              C. Selfish - do things that help themselves and harms others
              D. Stupid - do things that harm themselves and harm others

              We obviously want more (A) people while minimizing others. The detrimental e

      • The rich would like Elysium (thus the push for off planet activity) but will end up with Soylent Green (thus the purchasing of islands and private enclaves)...

        Covering their bases.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      Remember last June when science.org published an article about how cleaning up sulfur pollutants from ship fuels were causing a noticeable warming in ocean temperatures? Oops. The lesson we need to learn from this and learn it quite rapidly is that we need to focus on CO2 and methane and leave everything else intact because, pollutant or not, it might actually be helping us stave off warming.

  • Too bad the Europeans have a thing against AC.

    • Yeah that's the real root of the problem, here.

      • That's very glib. But it is clearly obvious that air conditioning could mitigate the effects of heat on the sensitive. I note that your "heat wave" is normal temperatures for most of the USA, we don't have people keeling over dead on New Orleans/Houston streets every July.

        Having air conditioning would definitely reduce the death count and is a practical solution that can be implemented right now, for relatively cheap. But you apparently want to wait around for a perfect solution in the indefinite future (

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      We don't.

      It's just not necessary in 90% of Europe. We didn't build mega-cities in near tropical climate. A week or two of really hot weather during the summer is not a problem and you wouldn't install an AC just for that.

      • It's just not necessary in 90% of Europe. We didn't build mega-cities in near tropical climate.

        ok [worldatlas.com]

        • So out of the 15 in the list only 7 are in Europe and none of them is a megacitiy.

          • By modern standards, where there are 25 million people in Los Angeles and immediately surrounding areas, no. But a million people in one place is still a lot.

            Anyway stop talking about Europe like it's some isolated region, it's a sandwich.

      • s/it's just not/it just was not/g

        FTFY

      • A week or two of really hot weather during the summer is not a problem and you wouldn't install an AC just for that.

        I would.

        I'd at least have a few window units around for when I needed them....much like they do in older US homes built before central AC was a thing.

    • AC helped cause this problem. Nobody needs AC below 30 deg C, turn on a fan, cool,the house down each morning with free cool air outside.

      • That was fine before the current climate, now all you do is draw in the morning high humidity. I guess if you live in a dry desert it can still work.

      • Typical fascist. Telling the people what they need, rather than letting people just decide for themselves what they need.

  • please don't do such shoddy reporting (Score:3)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @02:39AM (#64416528) Homepage Journal

    Europeans are suffering with unprecedented heat during the day and are stressed by uncomfortable warmth at night.

    Maybe some are, but both in my place and where my parents live (1200 km away, that's 750 miles for the metrically challenged) temperatures have plummeted to near freezing at night and single-digits during the day (in Celsius, that's the 35 to 45 range in Fahrenheit for the temperature scale challenged).

    I don't doubt climate change at all. But shoddy journalism that creates headlines where those allegedly affected go "what? not at all, why are you lying?" only helps the deniers.

    If you look at a weather map of Europe, like this one stuck in the early 2000s - https://www.weatheronline.co.u... [weatheronline.co.uk] - you'll see that at least right now only the very, very southern tips of Europe (in Spain and Greece, that's in the bottom-left corner and the bottom-right corner, no not the very corner that's already Africa, damn where were you in geography?) has temperatures above 20ÂC predicted for today, and that's not unusually hot for those regions.

    We did have unusually hot weather 2-3 weeks ago, but they were unusual only for the season and still well below ordinary summer days.

    Please get your reporting right, or you're only feeding the trolls that claim climate change is made up.

    • > still well below ordinary summer days.

      Not here: those were "regular" summer days where I live. 30C+ is a "Tropical day" in local meterological jargon. We average around 15 of those per year. Getting 2 in April is very unusual.

      Now we're at -5C at night (not unexpected for this time of year). That's a death sentence for many a crop after the heat (blooming flowers + frost = no fruit). Not to mention pollinators being out of season. It is an interesting year so far.

    • Pot, meet kettle.

      From TFS (a couple of sentences before your quote):

      > ...helped push temperatures in Europe last year to the highest or second-highest levels ever recorded...

      It's not about this year, or last week - it's about last year. You know, the one where half of southern europe was on fire - that one. People died through all of that - they're called "heat related deaths", which TFS also mentions. The article (and TFS) is pretty clear, although it mixes tenses which is maybe what's confusing.

      As for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        although it mixes tenses which is maybe what's confusing.

        Yeah. I'd expect journalists to know basic grammar and not use present tense when talking about last year.

  • We just had frost this night! Scorching, heh. Negative records broken.
    Almost a month before the Ice Saints. shocking I say!

  • A Guardian article.

    That explains it.

    They are like The Sun but for left wing politics.

  • ... was cancelled last winter and you could almost wade through the Rhine where I live last summer. Right now we just had 0C (freezing threshold) this morning before sunrise but 8 days ago people were walking around in T-Shirts with 28C outside.

    Last year the tourists left the Mediterranean because it was too warm. The actual Mediterranean Sea was to warm, with water temperatures reaching 30C and more. Two years ago in summer you'd have 37C after sundown for days on end.

    Not fun and bad news for Southern Euro

  • Oh. I thought Europe had baked the heat stress in, into what, I dunno, maybe forecasts.

  • I live in the middle of Europe and cold weather causes much more suffering than that couple of months with decent weather. Climate change is indeed needed to raise the temperature and help reduce the need to wear protective gear against the cold throughout most of the year.
    Maybe those who made the report have higher than average volume-to-surface ratio and very high amounts of built-in fatty insulation.

  • Why waste all this time focused on a contributing factor ("heat trapping pollutants") if the real problem is the amount of heat being generated in the first place?

    • Why waste all this time focused on a contributing factor ("heat trapping pollutants") if the real problem is the amount of heat being generated in the first place?

      Why didn't we think of that? Just turn down the thermostat for the sun. It seems so obvious now.

  • Summary says that Europe was 7% wetter, however it's not "Europe" but rather "parts of Europe", which leads to some areas living through droughts and others through floods. So although Europe was on average wetter, for southern France it's never been dryer up to the point that we're running out of water during the summer months because it's not raining and we're no longer getting any snow during winter (I live in the alps at 1000m and had at most 15cm, maybe 20cm of snow total at my altitude during last win
  • It's disheartening to see the impact of climate change firsthand. The rise in temperatures and the associated challenges are indeed concerning. Personally, I've been thinking a lot about climate action lately, especially after recently completing a geography project. It's eye-opening to see how interconnected everything is. Speaking of which, I recently found some great geography assignment help at https://essays.edubirdie.com/g... [edubirdie.com] which really guided me through my project. Climate change is such a pressing

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