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July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded
- bnolsen 11y agosure. more than half the data used in their models is fake made up numbers. Can't trust anything noaa has to say. using non made up temperature data shows we're actually very slightly cooling.
- kailuowang 11y agodo you have any reference?
- verandaguy 11y agoWhat's your source on this? As someone who doesn't normally follow these kinds of reports, does NOAA have a history of falsifying data? Further, what's your source on your last statement, that global temperatures are dropping?
- OniBait 11y agoI suspect it is from Tony Heller (aka Stephen Goddard). Looks like he has a blog post about it here [1]. (note: Heller is nuts so it is hard to take what he says at face value, but it would appear he has a valid point on all the temperature adjustments going on). The NOAA does adjust the data (and continues to do so) based on various factors like time of observation (TOBS), urban heat island effect (UHI). As well as infilling data when a station drops or they don't have the coverage. As for the global temp dropping. That is most likely based on the satellite data showing a slight decrease (the hiatus). [1] https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/the-majority-of-noaa-land-temperature-data-is-fake/ https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/the-majority-...
- Pyxl101 11y agoRather than trying to fill in data that we don't have, are there models based on only the data that we actually have?
- reefoctopus 11y agoWhy do you believe this? One making an accusation of that nature should cite sources.
- Afforess 11y agoI don't see why using inferred/model data is a bad thing. It is simply not feasible to measure the temperature at every location in the world. Satellite data, combined with in-situ and model calculations can very accurately fill in for missing data. The only other option here is to sit on our hands and say "oh well, I guess we can't predict the weather because we don't have perfect data", which is completely unreasonable.
- pdkl95 11y agoThere is another potential concern besides the inferred data (which, as you say, should be reasonable), though I don't know how much it would affect any of the larger conclusions (if they are affected at all). [also, this reference is somewhat old now; I haven't checked if this problem has been addressed in more recent models] There is evidence[1] that the climate model software doesn't handle floating point properly (which is, unfortunately, a very common problem). "... there exist differences in the results for different ... parallel libraries, and optimization levels, primarily a result of the treatment of rounding errors ... the ensemble spread due to the differences in software system is comparable to the ensemble spread due to the differences in initial conditions ..." Rounding errors on different hardware, operation ordering, and optimization level screams that the software isn't properly handling[2] IEEE 754 floating point. This could be a serious problem in an iterated model that is chaotically sensitive to initial conditions (hence the use of ensemble forecasting). /* regardless, we need a lot thorium reactors ASAP */ [1] http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1 [2] (pdf) https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/NumericalAnalysis/02Numerics/Double/paper.pdf https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/NumericalAnalysis/02Numer...
- elektromekatron 11y agoMore than half? Is that a made up number?
- ChrisClark 11y agoClimate change deniers are required to provide proof.
- cryoshon 11y agoIf you don't trust the NOAA, just check the Russian, Chinese, or European climate models and temperature measurements. I guarantee you they'd be happy to prove America wrong on the world stage, so there's an incentive for them to be accurate.
- ams6110 11y agoSince 1880 Edit: I normally don't react to downvotes but this is a direct quote. Larger context: this was also the all-time highest monthly temperature in the 1880–2015 record, at 61.86°F (16.61°C), surpassing the previous record set in 1998 by 0.14°F (0.08°C)
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- fluidcruft 11y agoIt's pretty easy to understand why it's being downvoted. It doesn't contribute to the conversation--it's a pedantic tangent that isn't any more interesting than noting that (1) the surface of the Earth used to be molten and (2) all matter in the known Universe was a lot hotter during the big bang. Is that relevant?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- inversionOf 11y agoThe surface of the Earth was molten some 4.5 billion years ago. The big bang was about 14 billion years ago. The start of the relative record is a mere 135 years ago. It is absurd to conflate the two, and it's a critical foundation for the statement. By simple random odds (which given that weather stations are few and far between, simple odds of micro-climates can shift temperature slightly), even with zero influence of global warming or any other effect, it's entirely possible to break records set over such a short period. I'm far too lazy to calculate random odds right now, but setting a new high at a 17 year interval doesn't seem remarkable. It is in the context of global warming, but in isolation it really doesn't mean much. This isn't an anti AGW comment, and it's unfortunate that it's impossible to even state something so fundamental without it becoming religious, but the truth is that we've been recording our planet for a very short period of time, with growing accuracy and coverage every year.
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- werber 11y agoI'm glad they're some tangential evidence to back up my month long moaning, "It's like literally never been this hot before".
- elektromekatron 11y agoUnless you were continent hopping all month, I'm afraid it doesn't.
- mjfl 11y agoLast February was also one of the coldest. http://www.weather.com/news/news/top-five-coldest-february-midwest-northeast http://www.weather.com/news/news/top-five-coldest-february-m...
- samth 11y agoIn a small part of the world with many HN readers. Whereas the OP is about the globe.
- zajd 11y agoin Many Midwest and Northeast Cities
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- elektromekatron 11y agoLast February was the second hottest on record. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a14585/sorry-snow-doesnt-mean-theres-no-global-warming/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a14585/s...
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- jonathanagough 11y agoExcept if you look at the linked article and change the month to February. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201502 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201502 Second hottest on record
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- viach 11y agoGood job guys, you better find a way to reach these earth-like planets faster.
- atourgates 11y agoIs it possible to separate the warming that's caused by man-made pollution/CO2 from the earth's natural cycles? Obviously, we're getting warmer because of pollution, but is that on-top of a natural warming cycle? Being partially counteracted by a natural cooling cycle? Could we all be saved by an ice-age?
- nitrogen 11y agoThat's exactly what climatology is all about; identifying all contributing factors from all data globally.
- xefer 11y agoIt may be just the opposite; i.e, the Earth is actuallly in a cooling cycle so the current warming is even worse than indicated. There was an article in Scientific American back 2005 where the author claims that human activity since the dawn of agriculture may have held off a return to an ice age: https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans%20alter%20global%20climate.pdf https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans... This very much does not mean that the current warming is in any way a good thing.
- teraflop 11y agoThere's a ton of information about the available science, from high-level overviews all the way down to nitty-gritty technical details, in the periodic reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They're published every several years, and the most recent one is from 2014. A good place to start is the so-called synthesis report, which covers a mixture of physical science, human impact and public policy. Page 6 of the "summary for policymakers" includes a graph showing that although the error bars are still pretty big, the observed warming is consistent with estimates of human-caused effects, and vastly larger than can be explained by the "natural cycles" we know about. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...
- acqq 11y agoYes, it is possible to look at the different causes separately and Bloomberg made a nice web page definitely worth the visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
- claar 11y agoData: Hottest month ever! Group A: Weather != Climate. Data: Coldest month ever! Group B: Weather != Climate. Round and round we go.
- nitrogen 11y agoGroup A and Group B are mostly the same. Global "warming" leads to increases in extremes at both ends.
- elektromekatron 11y agoGet two thermometers and turn up the dial on your fridge.
- teraflop 11y agoThat's a bit of a false comparison. Most of the "coldest ever" headlines that you'll see are talking about particular locations or regions, which have extremely high variance. If you look at enough different subsets of your data, you're bound to find both high and low extremes somewhere. But this article is talking about a global average, which is much less noisy. When you look at global average temperatures over a comparable span of time (since ~1880), every year in the last couple of decades has been pretty close to a record high. The last record low was more than a century ago. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
- mikeash 11y agoThe last global "coldest month ever" was in 1893. So no, people are not responding to "coldest month ever" in any way right now.
- elektromekatron 11y agoI find it continually amazing how many people find NASA sending rockets into space all the time to be an expected and everyday part of modern life, but then don't trust them with a thermometer.
- scarmig 11y agoTemperature measurement is a hard problem, hard enough you could write a PhD on it. Asking questions about methods etc. is entirely acceptable. The issue is when people refuse to recognize that thousands of scientists have made this their career, and thousands of PhDs actually have been written on temperatures past and present, and think that talking heads on Fox News reciting memos paid for by fossil fuel companies contain even the semblance of a real critique.
- pgrote 11y ago> Asking questions about methods etc. is entirely acceptable. I am fascinated by the topic of temperature collection methods through the years. Is there an easily digestible source with explanations?
- scarmig 11y agoNot that I know of, unfortunately--most of what I know I've gleaned from conversations with a brother who works in the field, and from http://realclimate.org/ http://realclimate.org/ , which has some decent technical information for a blog (but unfortunately has declined a bit IMO).
- twoodfin 11y agothink that talking heads on Fox News reciting memos paid for by fossil fuel companies contain even the semblance of a real critique. When did this happen?
- scarmig 11y agoPretty much any time Fox News talks about climate change temperatures? http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/13/dana-perino/fox-news-host-climate-scientists-fabricated-temper/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/13/... "They're (the White House) actually kind of lucky that we don't cover climate change as much as we should," Perino said. "Because yesterday, it was reported that the temperature readings have been fabricated and it's all blowing up in their faces." Co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle interjected that it was "fraud science" and Perino said, "Yes, I agree." That took me less than 10 seconds to Google.
- pbreit 11y agoI suspect that, man-made or not, we are past the point of being able to "fix" it and probably just need to adapt.
- cryptoz 11y agoClimate change is the biggest problem of our time. I wish there were more startups focused on solving it - there are so many opportunities to make money here while improving the world at a global scale. Mitigating the effects of climate change for businesses could easily be worth $1T+. More VCs should pay attention to these opportunities, and more startup founders should enter this space.
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- cryptoz 11y agoYes, governments will pay a lot. The US Department of Defense considers climate change to be an urgent national security issue. [1] But also, agribusiness like Monsanto will pay - they just bought Climate Corp for $1B+ a couple years ago to improve weather and climate predictions for crop outputs. The primary customers are probably insurance companies I think. There's a lot of money to be saved by predicting and avoiding catastrophes through better planning. A catastrophe might be as simple as a 1deg C temperature difference over a farm during a month - or a hurricane, or a drought, etc. [1]: http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint_wForeword_c.pdf http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint_wForeword_c.pdf
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cryptoz 11y ago> So let me get this straight ... selling climate control stuff to the government No, you got it wrong. Please read my comment again and recognize that I think most profits would come from a variety of different private sectors, specifically agribusiness and insurance. > nobody has thought of On the contrary, there are many startups in this space. I even mentioned some by name. I am making a call for more to enter the space and join the efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, help large enterprises and governments adapt, and make lots of money while doing so.
- jedberg 11y agoHas anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?
- savanaly 11y agoYes, other people have noticed that.
- zajd 11y agoI think you'll find (and the comments on this story illustrate the point quite succinctly) that there are still many idiots who are willing to tow the "human driven climate change is a made up thing" Sad but true
- braythwayt 11y agoI think “toes the line” is an expression literally meaning, “To advance to the start of a race.” From there, we get the idea of participating in something, and from there we get conforming to rules or standards. As in, “Raganwald has a potty mouth in person, but he toes the line and respects HN’s guidelines for civil discussion."
- dhimes 11y agoI understand that the term is nautical: http://www.seatalk.info/cgi-bin/nautical-marine-sailing-dictionary/db.cgi?db=db&uid=default&FirstLetter=t&sb=Term&view_records=View+Records&nh=4 http://www.seatalk.info/cgi-bin/nautical-marine-sailing-dict...
- braythwayt 11y agoThere seems to be some uncertainty about its origins, with some saying sports, many cite “toeing the plank,” and a few other explanations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line
- Carrok 11y agoIt's interesting to me that if you say "today was hotter than any day on record" The answer given always seems to be global warming. However if you say "today was colder than any day on record" (also happens very frequently) the answer given is "That's weather, not climate." Edit: Apparently this is not interesting to HNers. Bring on the downvotes.
- zajd 11y agoIt's not interesting because if you are talking global temperatures (which is what the article is about) we haven't had a coldest month ever recorded in... decades.
- adevine 11y agoIt's not interesting to HNers because it has nothing to do with what the article says. The article is talking about the average temperature across the entire surface of the Earth, for the entire month of July. You are talking about when one very small bit of geography has a local minimum or maximum temp.
- antimagic 11y agoFirstly, this wasn't about one day, it was about one month. That already removes a lot of variability out of the data, particularly when you're talking about "global" temperature. Secondly, "hottest months on record" are happening far more frequently than coldest months ever. Like orders of magnitude more frequently. So yeah, it's not that we're not interested, it's that you re factually wrong.
- sloppycee 11y agoSeems there are now three things that can not be discussed rationally: politics, religion and climate change. It is a perversion of science when a scientific theory is no longer subject to healthy criticism and skepticism.
- mikeash 11y agoThat's because politics has consumed climate change and made it its own. I find it really disturbing that so much of (American) politics today is a debate over facts. Politics should be about debating priorities and principles and approaches based on commonly accepted facts.
- Zikes 11y agoThat's what they said last month! Get your story straight, scientists!
- marcusgarvey 11y agoFor those who believe that climate change is real, and a significant threat to our longevity on this planet, would you please view / read this and share your thoughts? http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14473 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=... I don't believe defeatism is helpful, but I got a very Prince "Party Like It's 1999" feeling after consuming this. What should we do? If we pull all the fossil fuels out of our economy tomorrow, everything will crash. Not to mention that there is zero political will to even contemplate this. So what should we do?
- mikeash 11y agoWhat we should do is transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as is reasonably possible. Not simply pull them all at once, because that won't help anything as you say, but start moving smartly in that direction. Fortunately we already are, even if not as quickly as we'd like. I think in the next few years we'll see rapid change as solar panels and batteries become cheap enough to compete with traditional energy on their own terms. I don't see the case for human extinction here. Your link mentions it, but doesn't appear to lay out the case at all, so I don't know what that statement is based on, but I don't see how it would occur. The potential disruption due to climate change is immense, but people will survive. The problem is not how to keep humanity alive, but how to keep civilization going without some sort of major backslide, and without getting a couple of billion people killed.
- marcusgarvey 11y agoThanks for the thoughtful comment. As for this point: >I think in the next few years we'll see rapid change as solar panels and batteries become cheap enough to compete with traditional energy on their own terms. I'm unsure how the recent slide in oil prices is effecting the comparative competitiveness of fossils vs. renewables. Not helpful, I imagine.
- mikeash 11y agoWhen it comes to electricity generation, I don't think oil prices affect it much. Oil isn't cost competitive for electricity as it stands. The fall in natural gas prices is affecting it, since natural gas is competitive for electrical generation. But coal still rules when it comes to cheap electricity, as long as you ignore the externalities of course. I think what's going to happen is that pretty soon, solar plus storage will be price competitive even with coal. Then there will be a big shift. It's unlikely that the price of coal will drop much.
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- M00n_Sl47r 11y agoDinosaurs weren't wiped out by an ice age. That ice age you refer to is probably "The ice age" of about 10000 years ago (the one humans think of when we say ice age, because we were there as a species), or maybe one of the other four that have occurred since the end of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago as a result of a massive meteor impact.
- leni536 11y agoI would really like to see a graph of the mean temperature of the hottest month in each year, so we can see how this trend compares to noise.
- bjwbell 11y agoIt's difficult even with that. The mean temperature is calculated via inference (obviously you can't have a thermometer everywhere). And there's occasional adjustments to how the global temp. is inferred. The NOAA recently did one [0]. They have a nice comparison list of the ten warmest years [1]. [0] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/page-1/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/pag... [1] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/page-3 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/pag...
- leni536 11y agoThat's interesting, should be hard to not introduce a systematic error.
- bjwbell 11y agoThat's why I prefer the data from satellite measurements. There's a couple for surface temperature at http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/ http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/ & http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature.
- stillsut 11y agoThis is to be expected during an El Nino year. Let's see how big it gets!