Europe Baked in 'Extreme Heat Stress' Pushing Temperatures To Record Highs (theguardian.com) 113
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.
"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.
Sounds about right (Score:3)
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All they got was a climate change zealots answerphone because they were busy gluing themselves to roads.
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There's always a business opportunity if you just look for it.
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Fun part: green nutjobs made it legally impossible to get a dual cycle heat pump if you live in one of the most common forms of living there is here. You can get a cooling cycle air heat pump as long as its not visible from outside in apartment buildings, but not heating cycle.
Guess which one is needed more in Finland?
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No one else can get one any more than I can. It's literally illegal. Green nutjobs made it illegal when in office.
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Talking to yourself again, I see?
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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
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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?
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> You want to call that normal?
It's called weather and thats what I've seen since 1980
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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It's coming for the Tropics and the US (Score:3)
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)
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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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!
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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.
"stupid" people (Score:3)
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
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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.
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Air Conditioning (Score:2)
Too bad the Europeans have a thing against AC.
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Yeah that's the real root of the problem, here.
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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 (
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Still.....better than sweating....
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Happy to be "part of the problem" and comfortable than being miserable in the heat.
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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.
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It's just not necessary in 90% of Europe. We didn't build mega-cities in near tropical climate.
ok [worldatlas.com]
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So out of the 15 in the list only 7 are in Europe and none of them is a megacitiy.
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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.
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FTFY
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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.
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I would too. Why the fuck be miserable for 2 weeks?
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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.
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Typical fascist. Telling the people what they need, rather than letting people just decide for themselves what they need.
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As we removed poverty and lengthened the worlds lifetimes, the worlds populations had no problem over populating.
Seems like the blame is there
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As we removed poverty
No, you exported poverty.
please don't do such shoddy reporting (Score:3)
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.
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> 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.
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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
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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.
Frosty night (Score:2)
We just had frost this night! Scorching, heh. Negative records broken.
Almost a month before the Ice Saints. shocking I say!
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the /s signoff was eaten... Oh well, downmod away.
Oh it's the Grauniad (Score:1)
A Guardian article.
That explains it.
They are like The Sun but for left wing politics.
35+C for weeks on end, skiing season ... (Score:2)
... 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
Re: 35+C for weeks on end, skiing season ... (Score:2)
Where the hell was the water in the mediterranean 30C? Where are your facts?
baked in (Score:2)
Oh. I thought Europe had baked the heat stress in, into what, I dunno, maybe forecasts.
That's some strange data at least. (Score:1)
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.
So, the problem is really just waste heat. (Score:2)
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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.
Europe is wetter (Score:2)
urgency of climate action (Score:1)
Re:Adjectives Assemble! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Go back into the caves. Like you said, we had our day, now it's time to go back.
Thing is there are so many deluded people who think we can continue as is with solar and wind :D
We either build nuclear and use hot rocks that are just sitting there in the ground or we go back to pre-industry.
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Melodrama much?
We have the technology to wane us from the habit of fossils now. Yes, it is indeed possible to have civilization AND a habitable planet.
Actually, considering how humans react when resources (especially stuff like food and water) get scarce, I dare say having a habitable planet is a prerequisite for retaining civilization.
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> We have the technology to wane us from the habit of fossils now
No we dont, what universe are you looking at?
To build that stuff we are using MORE and MORE fossil fuels as we refuse to build nuclear at all.
Show me where worldwide coal demand has gone down and I might believe you. Instead you will find that to produce the panels and turbines and EV's coal demand is increasing year on year and wont decrease for a long time yet.
People are wanting to capture carbon etc, but just simply ignore the sheer cra
The predicted impacts are appearing. (Score:5, Informative)
Even those people who don't follow science, and get their news from sources that lean heavily on native advertising, including from the fossil fuel industry, can see what is occurring.
Why can't you?
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It's called willful ignorance.
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It's like playing hide and seek with a three year old that covers his eyes and thinks if he can't see you, you can't see him.
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surely by now though wed see some concrete predictions no?
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Predicting something that's constantly changing isn't easy, I hope that's not too hard to grasp.
Going by what we can observe, what even I can say is that the outlook isn't that good. Then again, I hope the planet will last another 30 years. I don't have no kids and my remaining life expectancy is about that many years, so ... why the fuck should I care?
If you're younger and/or have kids... you should.
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Then again, I hope the planet will last another 30 years
im somehow know for sure it will be?
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Ok, let's phrase that differently, of course the planet will survive us, but my hope is more along the lines of it staying habitable for humans for about 30 years.
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how noble of you
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Noble? Nah. I'm just done trying to keep a planet habitable for dimwits who can't be assed to do it themselves, even though they are the ones that will suffer when (not if) it is FUBAR.
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> global food prices have increased
It’s called war and exacerbated by unelected dictators in the WHO shutting down the planet economies for several years.
> wildlife populations are down 69%
But it all seems fine here. Such a general statement needs links.
> wildfires
Happen every year. Last two years showed what happens when you save money by not managing large masses of burnable materials aka, large masses of trees and brush. To save cash and also thanks to the couple of years of economic s
Wildlife populations are not down 69% (Score:1)
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Why can't you?
Your first mistake was believing that people weren't seeing the issue. They all saw it. Very few people will deal directly with truth, they will avoid it even until death. So they lie and come up with all sorts of mental gymnastics to keep you from the truth, completely ignoring that dealing with the truth with solve all of the problems.
So we get 'energy' companies lying, politicians lying, and a bunch of stupid people following those lies and blocking any chance at fixing the issue.
Welcome to the planet Ea
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Now that the predicted impacts are appearing
what predictions when? Im sure the science is solid but one thing the climatologist are lax in is concrete predictions. genuinely, i stand to be corrected but I cannot find anything but vague "worse than now" statements
and we see temperature and precipitation records over and over again
and have done for billions of years. its your choice to call this "above" nature or separate from nature. man-made is irrelevant
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In Europe, "since records began" refers to late 19th Century. The meteorological service of the Paris observatory was founded 1854; it launches meteorological balloons since 1898, and started broadcasting 3 daily bulletins from by the Eiffel tower radio emitter in 1922. Their archive http://archivesmeteo.fr/ [archivesmeteo.fr] shows that big cities have basic observations from the 1850s and exhaustive data since 1890s (it's just disappointingly telling data is paper kept in some library and you need to go there).
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Usually when talking about global climate the "since records began" claim means since we had somewhat reliable *global* records, not just Europe. That means since the mid 1940s. For really reliable data we have proxy records (full of inconvenient facts best ignored apparently) and, recently satellite data (too new for any but the most recent and short term comparisons).
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Not reading the article is a Slashdot meme. You didn't even bother to read the first word of the article title before dashing off something silly.
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Err....I did. The first word of the article is "Scorching". What is the deep meaning that I am supposed not to have noticed? This article is all about a few examples of hot weather over a period of just a few decades. It also makes claims such as "the largest wildfire recorded in the EU". Obviously very bad but how old is the EU? It was created in 1993. 1993. Only 31 years ago. This "record" of the largest wildfire is not a real record. It is an event in a context of only 31 years! But the originatin
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The article is from the Guardian, this kind of writing is normal throughout the paper.
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> Not reading the article is a Slashdot meme
It's the Guardian. I'm in the UK and we know better.
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This is about the temperature observation in Europe, from the moment Europeans started recording reliable data, about 150 years ago. Other parts of the world are not the question here. Ancient Chinese chronicles have rainfall observations for thousands of years https://www.jstor.org/stable/2... [jstor.org] .
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It's amazing that when it comes to stating simple, verifiable and non-contentious facts about the longevity of human urban civilisation, the recency and very limited nature of modern global climate data, that the proxy records show much warmer and much cooler periods *during* our civilised period as a species, the result on slashdot is *always* to be moderated down as troll and flamebait. Sometimes there is also verbal abuse, ridicule, even threats. So far I've got off lightly this time. Interesting deba
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Man makes too much CO2
trapped heat warms the planet.
You're welcome.
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CO2 levels have been massively higher in the past with no effect on global temperature. CO2 makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere. It is essentially a trace element.
You're welcome anonymous pussy.
julian67 just solved climate change (Score:1)
Why didn't anyone realize sooner it was just that simple?
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Dont worry some of us agree 100%
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Exactly!
Also cities like Rome and Paris for example had much warmer climates in their past with rivers much lower. There is a roman bridge in Paris that is underwater because the river is so much higher today!
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The only downside to returning to the normal warm climate we would have between ice ages is: the UK where I live will get more exotic insects, like the wasps from France.
I've had it easy all my life not having things that can put me in a coma flying about but looks like thats ending. Luckily they are still rare in the UK.
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Climate change is now so political,
Not really. In some countries like the US politicians can be beholden to the anti-scientific narrative created by fossil fuel industry, because of how much money you need to be elected. But the increase in temperatures, droughts, flooding fires and sea levels are facts that are generally accepted.
and the financial incentives so perverse (grant money depends on you supporting the narrative)
This is not how science works. No grant application ever includes what the findings of the research will be.
that I doubt anyone can know the truth anymore.
It's not rocket science. Increasing greenhouse gasses is increasing the greenhouse effect. Most people can