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Earth

Unprecedented Number of Heat Records Broken Around World This Year (theguardian.com) 109

An anonymous reader shares a report: A record 15 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies. An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events.

He said the unprecedented number of records in the first six months was astonishing. "This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before," he said. "The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic." This is alarming because last year's extreme heat could be largely attributed to a combination of man-made global heating -- caused by burning gas, oil, coal and trees -- and a natural El Nino phenomenon, a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface that is associated with higher temperatures in many parts of the world. The El Nino has been fading since February of this year, but this has brought little relief.

"Far from dwindling with the end of El Nino, records are falling at even much faster pace now compared to late 2023," said Herrera. New ground is broken every day at a local level. On some days, thousands of monitoring stations set new records of monthly maximums or minimums. The latter is particularly punishing as high night-time temperatures mean people and ecosystems have no time to recover from the relentless heat. In late July, for example, China's Yueyang region sweltered though an unprecedentedly elevated low of 32C during its dark hours, with dangerously high humidity.

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Unprecedented Number of Heat Records Broken Around World This Year

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  • So what I just learned is its really hot the closer to the equator you are
    • Hmm, instead of roses, I will plant a few more ferns in my garden and start making coal. I may have a nice coal seam here in 100 million years or so.
  • Look, I'm all for studying this type of thing, but this whole article is a breathless, "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" write-up that's completely over-the-top about it, and why? It's not like anyone is taking this seriously. I mean, all us piss-ants that are supposed to stop existing in modern society, while still doing our subservient best for the giant corporations that are doing everything they can to strip-mine the entire planet of all resource potential, which we have decided is only wealth in disguise, we s

    • by Anonymous Coward
      I was past the point of caring about this shit a long time ago. It seemed pretty dire, but the world kept turning, and now it's just fucking annoying.
    • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @04:41PM (#64706710)
      I suppose the point is to convince people to do less damage, and to support policies that help us all to do less damage, and to be more circumspect and less tolerant of individuals and companies that want to continue to do the same unsustainable amount of damage that they've always done.
      • by srussia ( 884021 )
        I wrote a sternly worded letter to the Sun!
        • Thanks. I've written a sternly worded letter to your mom. It doesn't really help at all, either; it hurts the cause, if anything. But it made me feel better while I was writing it. Just like your letter, huh?
          • by srussia ( 884021 )
            My mom says thanks! However, she was a bit disappointed you didn't include a Zoom link for a "Kumbayayah" singalong!
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      TLDR: "I got mine, fuck you."

    • Exactly right. We also recorded a rather large solar output https://www.voanews.com/a/earth-hit-by-severe-solar-storm-/7739842.html [voanews.com] during this time. Radiation hitting the Van Allen belt brought the northern lights quite far south in May.

      I also find that it ain't my economic class creating 99% of the global warming..

    • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @05:26PM (#64706872)

      Look, I'm all for studying this type of thing, but this whole article is a breathless, "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" write-up that's completely over-the-top about it, and why?

      Is it? I mean... I was intrigued by your description so I just went and read it. What I got was a pretty straightforward list of what is. Mostly just a list of facts. There's very little loaded language or hyperbolic exaggeration to be found.

      It's not like anyone is taking this seriously. I mean, all us piss-ants that are supposed to stop existing in modern society, while still doing our subservient best for the giant corporations that are doing everything they can to strip-mine the entire planet of all resource potential, which we have decided is only wealth in disguise, we sorta take it seriously. But individually, all we can do is try to consume less.

      So... found the hysterics. Nobody is asking you to stop existing in modern society. That's some mightily loaded language there.

      What we're being asked to do is to basically shut the fuck up while our energy supply is shifted from non-renewable sources that emit incredible amounts of greenhouse gases to renewables. Basically, quit bitching about EVs, solar panels and windmill farms and let the energy producers do their job of moving from polluting sources to less polluting sources.

      The big decision makers always have the same answer when someone says they need to change something about their own behavior: "But, mah profits!" And then they wash their hands of it and go back to preachnig.

      But mah profits. Those are the very same profits out of which most people expect their pay - and incessant pay raises - to come. Is the corporate world imbalanced? Yes. But to expect - for instance - car companies to sell less-polluting vehicles at a loss so they're an easier choice for you isn't rational. Yes, this transition costs us all. Yes, businesses just pass their costs down to consumers. Yes, that means you and I get the final price tag.

      That said... how much stuff are you as an individual entitled to? If you only have the disposable income to replace your iPhone every three years instead of every time you neglectfully drop it because it's throwaway-money to you, is that... unfair? What level of affluence are you owed and what level of social impact is acceptable for you to have whatever level of prosperity you think you're owed? These are hard questions. Me, I know I've already got far, far more wealth than is fair. If you divide up the wealth on the planet and divide it by the number of humans, I'm way, way, way over my fair share, and I'm just middle-class. So... I try not to think about that. 'Cuz guilt sucks. But when it comes time to complain because my exceptionally-unfairly-large slice of the pie shrinks a little, I try to pause and reflect a bit. Maybe it's not so bad that I'm paying more for stuff so it can have recycled packaging or is made with carbon-neutral processes.

      So? What's with the constant screeching at us? Is it supposed to help somehow? Or is the end-goal to just make us feel as mentally exhausted as possible as we kill the planet?

      Well, I mean... we could - you know - stop complaining and support the efforts to fix this shit-show. It's not so hard once you get over yourself. I mean... look. My current car is a v8. It's not even a sensible v8. There's no legitimate reason I need more than 700 horsepower for my daily driver. It's fun though. But... I know it's not a great thing and my next car won't be like this. I'm not out there yelling and screaming that EVs are "being forced down our throats". It's like lead in paint (and gasoline). Sure, it made things cheaper. But man, we were too stupid to stop using them on our own, so we needed government regulations to ban them. Our contribution as rational, compassionate beings is to not oppose these rule

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        car companies to sell less-polluting vehicles at a loss

        The only reason why US car companies lose money on electric vehicles is because of their shitty management, the rest of the world doesn't seem to have much trouble doing it. China and India are so good at it that imports of their electric vehicles have been effectively prohibited in order to protect the profits of the gas guzzler manufacturers. Hell, even Bolivia is producing an electric vehicle.

        we were too stupid to stop using them on our own, so we needed government regulations to ban them.

        Unfortunately our government has now been captured by people too short sighted and greedy to allow that sort of

      • Well said.
    • Historically speaking, humanity has only changed its ways after the shit has thoroughly hit the fan. My guess would be that these people screeching about climate change just want to be remembered for being on the "I told you so" side of history when our society is forced at a figurative climate gunpoint to finally change our ways. We're just not there yet, and there's quite a bit more road remaining for the can to be kicked down.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        I know a couple of climate scientists. They would derive zero pleasure saying "I told you so".
      • I've been following and worrying about this since 1994. There have been a lot of "I told you so's" since then. They don't really make me happy, it's just that I'd like people to learn that if they are consistently wrong and I'm consistently right, maybe I'll be right in the future too. But no.

        For a while now I've been saying that it's a matter of time before a really big city gets depopulated in a week of 40 degree Celsius night-time temperatures. We're going to see that in the next 10 years.

        Why do I know t

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Nobody is saying "we're all going to die". That's just a straw man that enables you to ignore what is going to be an expensive problem to deal with.

    • but this whole article is a breathless, "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" write-up that's completely over-the-top about it, and why

      No mate, you're talking bollocks. The article is a list of records broken.

      It's you round up a list of records to "OMG etc...", but I think I would say that anything approximating a view of reality is pretty much "breathless" according to all the usual morons.

      What's the point of all this nonsense?

      It's reality. If you cannot cope with a list of heat records which were broken this year the

    • I Love it, we Boomers get all the flack for "ruining the environment", yet here we see exactly the same I-don't-give-a-fuk mentality the mainstream of my generation had (and GenX too!). Of course, the shit wasn't hitting the fan back then like it is today, but the rationalization is the same - I'll be long gone before things get really bad.

  • We already adapt to every climate that exists and live almost everywhere in the world. As long as core needs are met, food, water, energy then slow temperature increases are not that harmful. We should be focusing on improving technology that allows us to adapt as we literally can't control the weather. Sure we can should try to slow the heating down, but natural sources cause significant climate variations as well. Hell, if we can use solar for energy and improve desalination we can solve two of the the th
    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      We already adapt to every climate that exists and live almost everywhere in the world. As long as core needs are met, food, water,

      Climate change has a large impact on food growth. No, if you warm up tundra and melt the permafrost, you can't actually say "we can farm that now!" On water, too. Fertile regions may turn into deserts.

      energy then slow temperature increases are not that harmful.

      Exactly. The problem is that the current temperature increase is very fast, compared to the time scale the ecology adapts to.

      We should be focusing on improving technology that allows us to adapt as we literally can't control the weather.

      We can't control the weather, but the climate is something that we are definitely affecting. This is no longer supposition; the evidence that we care causing the climate change is overw

    • yeah, we can adapt. All the people that live in the soon to be inhospitable places will start to migrate to the hospitable places - that should really please the bigots who hate immigrants.
  • The number of temperature records broekn is not an objective criterion since there are almost an infinite number of temperature records than can be defined and the number broken in any given year does not just depend on the temperature but also the number of such records that you are choosing to track in your list and how long those records have been tracked.

    For example, if I put a thermometer just outside my office window then I can immediately set a record for the highest temperature ever measured just
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      No, it's not them crazy eggheads dreaming up new records to break; it's the old ones getting broken over and over again.

      its far more persuasive to read a balanced article

      Citation needed. *Scientific* citation.

    • How many times have we been told, "weather is not climate!" when snowstorms in Texas (or similar events) are reported which purportedly disprove global warming?

      And yet, headlines like this deliberately conflate weather and climate when there's fearmongering to be done, and provide opportunities for climate skeptics to debunk. I can already imagine the skeptics headlines: "Coldest winter temperatures on record debunk global warming!" Where, of course the temperature is set in some remote Canadian provin

      • How many times have we been told, "weather is not climate!"

        Weather is not climate. Climate is the distribution of weather.

        And yet, headlines like this deliberately conflate weather and climate

        They do not. Climate is the distribution of weather. Repeatedly broken records are statistically very unlikely, and by far the most probable explanation is that the underlying distribution is changing. In other words, that climate is changing.

        I get it. Scientists think the climate is changing

        No, scientists know climat

    • The number of temperature records broekn is not an objective criterion

      It is if one doesn't assume malice in the construction of records.

      since there are almost an infinite number of temperature records

      Frankly you're being a bit of a cockwomble right now. Read the article. Every one of the broken records are national records. There are not an infinite number of those. There are in fact 195 of them.

      For example, if I put a thermometer just outside my office window then I can immediately set a record

      This is just

      • It is if one doesn't assume malice in the construction of records.

        Listen to yourself - if you have to consider the motivation of the person constructing the criterion then by definition it is not an objective criterion because it is the subjective choice of the person constructing it!

        Read the article. Every one of the broken records are national records.

        I did, try following your own advice. There were 15 national, 130 monthly national and, here I quote, "tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific". When counting records the number of individual monitoring station highs outweigh

        • Listen to yourself - if you have to [blah de blah de blah]

          This is the strangest "no u" I think I've ever encountered. You were the one hinting at mendaciously chosen records in order to prove a point, not I.

          since we have no idea how long each station has been operated for

          And by "we have no idea" you mean you were too lazy to check and decided to make assumptions.

          despite your objection to it, are exactly analogous to me sticking a thermometer outside my office window since that's basically what a monitoring

          • You were the one hinting at mendaciously chosen records in order to prove a point, not I.

            I was not hinting at anything. I was stating that it was not an objective criterion because it relied on a highly subjective choice of what you think counts as a record. What you have said shows that you actually agree that there is a choice and so _by definition_ it is not an objective criterion. It matters not whether the input data were chosen to present an honest picture or not, it is not objective.

            And by "we have no idea" you mean you were too lazy to check and decided to make assumptions.

            That's not how science works. If you are making a claim that there is an "unprecedented number of record

            • Don't be dishonest, you were talking about cherry picking clearly insane records, and using that to claim the whole idea is records isn't objective.

              If you stick too a reasonable set of records then yes they are objective. Just because you can choose to put your thermometer on an oven and claim it as a record doesn't mean that following a consistent set like global average temperature is not objective.

              That's not how science works.

              This article isn't "doing science" and not is it claiming to its reporting o

              • Don't be dishonest, you were talking about cherry picking clearly insane records

                No I was not - that's entirely your idea so do not blame me for your own hang ups. My point is that because there is was a choice of records to include _by definition_ the criterion is not objective. Two people could make different choices of records and come up with entirely different numbers and conclusions therefore this is not an objective criterion. This makes it meaningless because neither of us have any idea exactly which records were chosen so entier of us can know whether the chosen records bias t

                • OK, let's start with this:

                  It is silly, as I said to compare positive records to fluctuations below average. Why? Well I'm glad you asked!

                  For a stationary distribution, you expect the records to be less and less frequent over time, but you expect the merely below average fluctuations to occur roughly half if of the time. So yes it makes no sense to compare positive records to below average fluctuations.

                  You can compare positive records to negative records, or above average to below average fluctuations. Mixi

                  • It is silly, as I said to compare positive records to fluctuations below average. Why? Well I'm glad you asked! For a stationary distribution....

                    That assumption is wrong though, it is not a stationary distribution, we know the global average temperature is rising and so an upward fluctuation that breaks a record is a less significant fluctuation that a downward fluctuation that breaks a record. Since this article is using the number of positive records to indicate that global warming has accelerated and this is the position you are defending let's ask the question in an obviously statistically neutral way. If there was a cold fluctuation of equal s

                    • The article made no such claim that global warning is somehow faster than expected.

                      You have invented a reason to be anyway about the article and are like a dog with a bone. You will not give it up despite being completely wrong. All the things you quote are about the climate continuing to get hotter because that's what it is doing. Everything is about the continuous expected rise.

                      Absolutely nothing in the article is portraying it as somehow worse than predicted. This is something you have simply invented.

                      I

                    • The article made no such claim that global warning is somehow faster than expected.

                      Ok, then please explain how the statement in the article "This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen _or even thought possible before_." is at all consistent with warming following previously predictions, i.e. something we thought was possible before. Dodging the question - like I see you also did with the fluctuation question - and just saying "you are wrong" plus adding a few silly insults is not a rational argument. It is the approach typically taken by someone who can't refute the

                    • It's hilarious how you're engaging in hyper pedantry then whining when I bat it back to you. If you want to play the pedantry game, then play. If you don't, then don't. Being a sore loser is just sad.

                      Anyhow!

                      Ok, then please explain how the statement in the article

                      Good on you for (a) misquoting the article (that's a quote in the article, something you stripped) and (b) nitpicking the minutiae of language from an ESL speaker. That's shabby even by your standards. But let's dig in anyway.

                      This amount of extreme

                    • Good on you for (a) misquoting the article (that's a quote in the article, something you stripped) (b) nitpicking the minutiae of language from an ESL speaker.

                      Wow. So your argument is literally that I'm misquoting the article because I am quoting directly from the article? Seriously? It is also not nitpicking - the general tone of that quote is one of extreme concern which matches the meaning of what they are saying, This is not the case of someone picking the wrong word or two and, it is also the responsibility of the journalist to pick quotes that accurately convey the information and they picked this one unless it is your contention that it was the journalist

  • It's been a really nice summer. It's starting to cool down now that it is mid-August and the summer is winding down to Labor day.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      It's been a miserably hot and humid summer in the Pacific Northwest, we've spent most of it inside with the windows closed. We garden, a lot, and this year even our tomatoes look like crap no matter how much water we put on them. The only thing doing well is the fig tree, which will probably be producing fruit early this year. My in-laws live in Puno, Peru at 12,600 feet altitude. Their summer was record-breaking, in the 80s repeatedly and so dry that Lake Titicaca is at its lowest point in over a centu

  • ... about heat records is bad for the climate [slashdot.org].

  • ... no time to recover ...

    Experienced the southern summer this year, it wasn't as hot as some years at 32C, but it didn't drop below 28C at night. That made sleeping difficult, with it taking hours to fall asleep.

  • ...they will be broken again!

  • Cold kills far more people than heat. Thank you for pointing out this step in the right direction.

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