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Unprecedented Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest Driven by Climate Change
- hkai 5y agoHmmm. Imagine for a moment that someone argued: "this is such a cold winter! See, I told you global warming is a hoax!" That would be laughable. Yet people have no concerns about cherry picking anecdotal evidence when they say "see, it's so hot today, that means global warming".
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoIt's not anecdotal to point out that so many places have and continue to have record breaking temps for a record breaking number of days. That's not cherry picking anything.
- uncoder0 5y agoIt was 96 in 1955 in on June 9th in Seattle.
- bentcorner 5y agoLooking at the last 50 years of data and it's pretty clear Seattle is warming up: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/WA/Seattle/temperature-average-by-decade-seattle.php https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Decades/USA/WA/Seattl... Whether this is due to climate change, urban development or something else entirely could certainly be explained in more depth, but the trend is there.
- BB212 5y agoThat link is better than the headline because it is averaging hundreds of days for each data point. A four day heat wave is not very compelling data on its own.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoGoing back further, you can find 100 degrees in mid July of 1941: https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WA/Seattle/extreme-annual-seattle-high-temperature.php https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WA/Seattle... Though, that was before Sea-Tac was the official weather station: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/heres-why-seattles-weather-records-are-taken-at-seatac-airport/281-d587a9bd-a4b6-4915-8856-12b8b2e2618f https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/heres-why-s...
- anyfoo 5y agoFor years you take the train to work every day, at the same time. But you began to notice, that, recently the train has been late a lot. You begin to wonder whether this is due to some change to the train infrastructure. But behind you someone shouts “the train was 10 minutes late on one day 20 years ago”. Do you dismiss your hypothesis?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- uncoder0 5y agoOf course not.
- ElViajero 5y ago> “Heatwaves across the contiguous United States have occurred more often and lasted longer since the 1960s, which is consistent with a warming climate due to climate change.” Climate change is causing this trend. It is not an isolated event. There are expert that study climate. It is a false equivalence to call "cherry picking" the result of many years of study and confirmed trends with what an TV anchor says to appeal to their audience.
- carbonguy 5y agoWhat part of the evidence in this article do you consider "anecdotal?"
- lasfter 5y agoThe phrase "global warming" doesn't appear anywhere in this article. You're moving the goalposts. Both unusually cold winters and hot summers can be attributed to climate change. Things aren't so simple as "the world is supposedly warming so it should always be warm!" The fact is that throughout the world there has been an increase in unprecedented weather patterns. Right now in Argentina they're having record snowfalls, and that is just as concerning as the unheard-of 43C weather today in British Columbia. You're burying your head in the sand.
- geenew 5y agoThis is worth a read: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-no... “ Using a climate model, the researchers compared simulations accounting for climate change with scenarios in which human-caused global warming did not exist. They found that the influence of climate change roughly doubled the risk of an individual heat wave. The key to the breakthrough was framing the question in the right way—not asking whether climate change "caused" the event, but how much it might have affected the risk of it occurring at all.”
- outrun86 5y agoTangent: is this a “breakthrough” or standard issue causal inference?
- rantwasp 5y agoanecdotal? Seattle has had 100F+ maybe a few times in the last century. Now we had 3 days in a row of 100F+ with today hitting 110F. It's not even funny. Portland, OR has seen 115F. Most houses in PNW do not have AC. Do you know why? Because up to 10-15 years ago you did not need it. The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year. Yes, this is totally cherry-picking.
- throwawaysea 5y agoThat is exactly the definition of cherry picking. You’re claiming that one phenomenon is causally linked to a particular event. That evidence is not present in this article or your comment or anywhere else to my knowledge. Three days of high temperatures are all caused by the same single event, a southeasterly flow of air from the Cascades (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/showtime-temperatures-are-surging-to.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/showtime-temperatures...) coinciding with other seasonal factors driving high temperatures to create a particular set of extreme conditions. So how are you able to prove that this is exclusively caused by climate change?
- rantwasp 5y agoHere. let me write this again: Most houses in PNW do not have AC. Do you know why? Because up to 10-15 years ago you did not need it. The most you would get would be 80-85 once a year. 10-15 years ago you did not need AC. Today every summer you're in danger of a heatstroke if you don't have it. This is not cherry-picking Here. From the national weather service: 284 SXUS76 KSEW 290128 RERSEW RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE 628 PM PDT MON JUN 28 2021 ...RECORD HIGHS FOR TODAY, JUNE AND ALL-TIME AS OF 6 PM... LOCATION TODAY RECORD / YEAR SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 91 2008* OLYMPIA 110 92 2008* QUILLAYUTE 110 92 1995 HOQUIAM 95 86 2008 BELLINGHAM 99 84 1995 NWS SEATTLE 107 89 2000 && LOCATION TODAY JUNE RECORD / DATE SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 104 27/2021 OLYMPIA 110 105 27/2021 QUILLAYUTE 110 92 24/2017* HOQUIAM 95 103 27/2021 BELLINGHAM 99 95 27/2021* NWS SEATTLE 107 101 27/2021 && LOCATION TODAY ALL-TIME RECORD / DATE SEA-TAC AIRPORT 107 104 6/27/2021 OLYMPIA 110 105 6/27/2021 QUILLAYUTE 110 99 8/9/1981 HOQUIAM 95 103 6/27/2021 BELLINGHAM 99 96 7/29/2009 NWS SEATTLE 107 105 7/29/2009 * RECORDS SET ON MULTIPLE DATES; LATEST SHOWN
- yongjik 5y agoYour mistake, or shall I say, intentional misreading, is assuming that the existence of global warming is something that needs to be proven in the year 2021. We have already established that AGW is real. Nobody in their right minds are asking "Does this unprecedented heat wave prove the existence of global warming?" They are asking "Now that we know global warming is happening and that we're experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, is it likely that they are linked and we'll likely see more such events in the coming years?"
- refurb 5y agoWhat? The headline literally says “this heatwave is caused by global warming”. That’s the claim that spurious and unproven. And yes, it’s not different than having a cold snap and saying “this cold snap is making people question if global warming is happening”. Both are just cherry picked anecdotes.
- gdubs 5y agoIf I dump a bunch of wasps in your house, and I say, “hey, watch out for the wasps”, and then you get stung by some wasps — well, it’s pretty damn obvious what’s happening. Can you prove it? Eventually, maybe. And often times these extreme weather events do get properly studied and officially linked to Climate Change. Years later, after people make the same tired points about how you can’t prove this is linked to climate, yada yada yada.
- refurb 5y agoThat’s a terrible analogy. More like “if you were a bee keeper and got bit between 3 and 5 times a day and I introduced a more aggressive bee and you got bit 5 times two days in a row it proves it was due to the more aggressive bee”.
- space_fountain 5y agoI mean you're right, on some level. The heat wave is only evidence for global warming, just as a cold snap would be evidence against, but we can actually look at global average temperatures which have been climbing since we've been able to to track them. Lots of reasons you could argue that is happening and you can argue about why it's happening, but heat waves are one of the things it will lead to
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blueberry_47 5y agoTrump wrote on Twitter Thursday, "In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record." He added: "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!" https://www.foxnews.com/science/trump-says-east-could-use-some-global-warming-this-weekend https://www.foxnews.com/science/trump-says-east-could-use-so... Close enough?
- throwawaysea 5y agoThe article’s headline is sensationalist and it does not offer evidence for the claim that this heat wave is “driven by climate change”. The person quoted in the body of the article makes a less certain claim: > “It’s always difficult to immediately quantify how much impact climate change has had on a climate extreme, but there is plenty of evidence to show that high temperatures and heat waves have become worse due to climate change,” he wrote. “Heatwaves across the contiguous United States have occurred more often and lasted longer since the 1960s, which is consistent with a warming climate due to climate change.” Cliff Mass, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington in Seattle, maintains a public facing weather blog that analyzes such events. He had a recent post (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatures-are-being.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...) that suggests this is more of a chance convergence of various factors, including an air compression caused by air sinking off the Western slopes of the Cascade mountain range. More specifically he says: > Finally, a number of people have asked about the role of global warming on this event. Is global warming contributing to this heatwave? The answer is certainly yes. Would we have had a record heatwave without global warming. The answer is yes as well. Professor Mass has also promised a future blog post analyzing this event further in the context of global warming.
- TimSchumann 5y agoCliff Mass is an incredible source of knowledge when it comes to Weather in general. In addition to the quote you already pulled out of the article, I'd like to highlight this one. > Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that.
- rantwasp 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR58heUGkNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR58heUGkNA We're going to grow oranges in Alaska!
- xwdv 5y agoSo what happens if this becomes routine? Will we just have to build all homes to have central AC like Florida?
- jeff303 5y agoMost homes in the midwest, south, and west (apart from coastal California, perhaps) have central air.
- Baeocystin 5y agoTrust me, coastal California is all about air conditioning as well.
- musingsole 5y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Future-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0316300136 https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Future-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/...
- zzleeper 5y agoWill that create more global warming?
- runarberg 5y agoNot if powered by green energy. Another reason why we must invest in green infrastructure.
- lasfter 5y agoEven if powered by green energy, AC increases overall temperatures in a city (the heat has to go somewhere). Not global warming, but definitely makes it more miserable.
- panny 5y agoHFCs in AC are GHGs with higher GWP than CO2 too. https://www.epa.gov/snap/reducing-hydrofluorocarbon-hfc-use-and-emissions-federal-sector-through-snap https://www.epa.gov/snap/reducing-hydrofluorocarbon-hfc-use-...
- refurb 5y agoSo the last record broken in BC was from 1937. Was that heatwave caused by global warming too?
- lovich 5y agoTo everyone questioning climate change’s existence in this thread, I have one question. What was the last year in recorded history that was colder than average?
- drukenemo 5y agoYou are probably referring to human made climate change, right? Because the climate will always change, if you’ve heard of glacial ages for example. I don’t know, but where I am (Netherlands) it’s been quite cool lately (Max 19C/66F today) and it’s summer. But if I point that out people say it’s part of the human made CG phenomenon. In other words, every temperature manifestation is part of the phenomenon and we’re supposed to have a normal and this is abnormal. Was there ever a normal, really? Measurements of records are also controversial, as technical capacity to measure temperature (including having more thermometers worldwide) has increased overtime.
- lovich 5y agoOh I can rephrase it if need be. Rephrased Question: What was the last year in recorded history that the global average temperature was lower than average? As a second question, Define x = “normal” || “average” If you are questioning what “x” or “x temperature” is as an axiom, then what is your definition of “x”? I don’t want to talk past you if you have a different definition. If you have a different definition than I do however, I need to understand what that definition is before we have any sort of discussion.
- drukenemo 5y agoTo my understanding, recorded temperatures don't go that long ago for us to use that alone and establish deviation from the real old past. And as said, the availability of thermometers (specially in the oceans) has increased over time (i.e. more data coming in more recently). This should skew averages. Besides, the validity of thinking in averages in a pretty wild range of temperatures this planet demonstrates could be questioned anyway. Furthermore, cities have grown dramatically in the last century. Urbanisation creates more heat and thermometers in cities (which of course are used as a reference too), have been steadily reflecting that fact, obviously. But the problem is, discussing those things put you in the "petrol head" "let's pollute" field, which is definitely not my case. They are attempts to silence the discussion, in my view.
- gdubs 5y agoFFS people - we don’t need a peer reviewed study of every extreme weather event to tell us it’s Climate Change. It was 115 degrees in Portland Oregon today. Beating the previous record that was [checks notes] … yesterday.
- rantwasp 5y agowell... prepare for pedantry as people will lecture you about statistics significance and how this means nothing and how you don't actually know what you're talking about. this is where we are today. people melting because of the heat and still debating if global warming is a thing. jfc. this is where we are.
- jzellis 5y agoYes, but we're also finally unfortunately at the point where those people can be dismissed out of hand and the grownups at the table can have an actual discussion about the obvious and imminent threat at hand. They sound like the crazies now. It's refreshing to those of us who've been screaming about climate collapse for decades. I'm not sure the smug joy I get from being right about everything outweighs the, y'know, existential terror, but at least now maybe we can quit jerking off and pretending fossil fuels are Jesus's loot crate for humanity and start trying to figure out how to not go extinct in the next couple of decades.
- rantwasp 5y agoare we at that point? i’m afraid we’re more at the point where everything is up for discussion and everyone can cherrypick their news “sources” to match whatever fucked up conspiracy theory the believe