5 ms·

Earth just had its hottest September on record

28 points by perfunctory 6y ago

boringg 6y ago
And in a pandemic year.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Is there significance to this beside "oh yeah, that's a problem too"?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    Parent probably expects lowered economic activity to have some visible impact on weather.
  - boringg 6y ago
    see other comment in the thread ^^
- comeonseriously 6y ago
  This has been a century in the making, I am not sure that 6 months of economic downturn is going to have much affect.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Indeed it has been longer than that. The hope was that at least with 6 months lowered economic activity there would be some temporal relief - though the lag from CO2e pollution to temperature spike is probably significantly more than 6 months so no benefit would be seen until next year.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      It wouldn't be expected to actually lower the temperature. Even with the downturn, we're still producing more CO2 than the environment can absorb, so CO2 will net increase. The best you can hope for is that it would increase less than expected. The metaphor I heard from several researchers is that it's like a bathtub filling up -- we turned down the tap a bit, but it's still going to overflow. So you wouldn't expect the temperature to be lower than previous years. It might be lower than the predicted amount, but probably by less than the uncertainty in the prediction. The year as a whole is shaping up to be the second hottest (after 2016), though it's possible that it may end up being hotter than than year as well.
hprotagonist 6y ago
The extremely depressing take I read recently was "Don't think of this as one of the hottest years on record -- think of it as one of the coldest years of your life!"
kyleee 6y ago
title could be better, seems false based on a quick look at the temperature record: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#...
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  The very first sentence clears it up: "Unprecedented heat around the world vaulted September 2020 to the hottest September since 1880, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information." I think you may be giving a bad faith argument here a bit. At the very beginning of the geological record wasn't the Earth also a superhot ball of motel spacestuff?
  - kyleee 6y ago
    didn't mean it in a bad faith way, i may just be a stickler about titles and ~140 years is a miniscule sample size to be making such a strong claim

28 points by perfunctory 6y ago

boringg 6y ago

And in a pandemic year.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
Is there significance to this beside "oh yeah, that's a problem too"?
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Parent probably expects lowered economic activity to have some visible impact on weather.
- boringg 6y ago
  see other comment in the thread ^^
comeonseriously 6y ago
This has been a century in the making, I am not sure that 6 months of economic downturn is going to have much affect.
- boringg 6y ago
  Indeed it has been longer than that. The hope was that at least with 6 months lowered economic activity there would be some temporal relief - though the lag from CO2e pollution to temperature spike is probably significantly more than 6 months so no benefit would be seen until next year.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    It wouldn't be expected to actually lower the temperature. Even with the downturn, we're still producing more CO2 than the environment can absorb, so CO2 will net increase. The best you can hope for is that it would increase less than expected. The metaphor I heard from several researchers is that it's like a bathtub filling up -- we turned down the tap a bit, but it's still going to overflow. So you wouldn't expect the temperature to be lower than previous years. It might be lower than the predicted amount, but probably by less than the uncertainty in the prediction. The year as a whole is shaping up to be the second hottest (after 2016), though it's possible that it may end up being hotter than than year as well.

hprotagonist 6y ago

The extremely depressing take I read recently was "Don't think of this as one of the hottest years on record -- think of it as one of the coldest years of your life!"

kyleee 6y ago

title could be better, seems false based on a quick look at the temperature record: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#...

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
The very first sentence clears it up: "Unprecedented heat around the world vaulted September 2020 to the hottest September since 1880, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information." I think you may be giving a bad faith argument here a bit. At the very beginning of the geological record wasn't the Earth also a superhot ball of motel spacestuff?
- kyleee 6y ago
  didn't mean it in a bad faith way, i may just be a stickler about titles and ~140 years is a miniscule sample size to be making such a strong claim