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US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

118 points by pizza 5y ago

fy20 5y ago
Where did the 'heat dome' term come from? Is it actually a new kind of weather phenomenon (the Wikipedia page is from this year) or just a new term the media has been (ab)using instead of calling it a heat wave as they would before?
- hanselot 5y ago
  Doesn't heat dome sound way more sensational? Hard to convince people to take a wolf seriously with decades of crying about it. In fact, at this point, we are all voting for the wolf.
- fulafel 5y ago
  There are mentions in papers from the 1980s, eg https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02507142 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02507142 (edit: changed link, fixed from earlier where the context was minerals instead of climate and dates were in 70s)
  - tpmx 5y ago
    Those talk about tank domes, salt domes, limiting dome height tests, etc etc.
    - fulafel 5y ago
      Thanks, updated.
liquidise 5y ago
> “Heat dome over North America, showing high temperatures predicted across the continent.” Such is the caption to a map showing no temperatures, or even potential heat but rather a predicted delta from regional norms. This sort of behavior was exactly why I unsubscribed from the guardian after years of support post Snowden. I have no doubt this summer has been warmer on average. Here in Denver the smoke cover from Oregon’s fires must be contributing a measurable impact itself. That said our forecast for the coming week is highs between 85-90, which feels in line for most July’s since I’ve lived here.
- edrxty 5y ago
  It's not even a norms delta, it's a probability of any deviation from norms. The creators (https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/) even put out a survey a couple years ago trying to figure out if anyone actually understood the data. The maps have pretty much always looked like that in the summer over the past five years.
  - sschueller 5y ago
    "The 6-10 day Outlook gives the confidence that a forecaster has, given as a probability, that the observed temperature, averaged over upcoming days 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 will be in the range of one of three possible categories - below (B), normal (N), or above (A). For any calendar 5-day period, these categories can be defined by separating the 30 years of the climatology period, 1981-2010 (30 years), into the coldest 10 years, the middle 10 years, and the warmest 10 years. Because each of these categories occurs 1/3 of the time (10 times) during 1981-2010, for any particular calendar 5-day period, the probability of any category being selected at random from the 1981-2010 set of 30 observations is one in three (1/3), or 33.33%. This is also called the climatological probability. The sum of the climatological probabilities of the three categories at any point on the map is 100%. Graphical Information The colored shading on the map indicates the degree of confidence the forecaster has in the category indicated, where "B" and blue colors indicate "below-normal" and "A" and orange-red colors indicate "above normal". The darker the shading, the greater is the level of confidence. The numbers labeling the contours separating different shades gives the probability that the indicated category (A, B, or N) will occur. The probabilities of all three categories are implied on the map, and sum to 100%. The forecast probabilities given on the map generally fall far short of complete confidence (100%) in any single category. When the probability of the above (A) or below (B) category is greater than 33.33% by some amount, the probability of the opposite category declines by that amount, while the probability of the middle category remains at 33.33%. In the event that the "N" category is greater than 33.33%, the probabilities of both the "A" and "B" categories is each reduced by 1/2 the amount that the "N" category exceeds 33.33%. When the probability of "A", or "B" reaches 63.33% or higher, the odds of the opposite category reach a minimum allowed value of 3.33%, while the odds of the middle category are allowed to drop below 33.33%. The dashed contours on the map give the average of the temperature over the set of 30 observations for the calendar 5-day period during 1981-2010, in degrees Farenheit." Uff, not sure why the guardian picked that map when they could have found something more clear for the average reader, like me...
nevi-me 5y ago
We have experienced the coldest winter since 2011 in the Southern Hemisphere (at least South Africa) this year. The summer was also warmer than average. I wonder what less conservative global warming forecasts would look like, and whether the winter this year will be average in US and CA.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  It's been a mild summer for central and eastern US. The West has gotten all the heat and we've had higher than average rainfall in the eastern 2/3rds. Even Arizona getting a lot of rain now.
- antonvs 5y ago
  "Global warming" involves extremes of temperature on both ends of the scale, and "coldest winters" are not inconsistent with that. Think about a pot of hot water vs. one that's boiling. The surface of the water in the boiling pot is not smooth, it has peaks and troughs. The level of some of those troughs will be lower than the level of the water in a less energetic pot. The situation with global warming is similar, although much less simple (pots of water don't have seasons, among other things.) More energy in the atmosphere and the Earth's crust translates into more extreme temperature fluctuations, both up and down. However, the average will inevitably be higher. Basic physics doesn't allow for anything else.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    HEre on HT it may not necessary, but when talking to people not at ease with sciences, this sentence : > Basic physics doesn't allow for anything else. is very important. It means : you do not negotiate with physics. So, you do not negotiate on climate change. When I hear some politics I'm sometimes appalled by their lack of understanding of basic physics laws.
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    It is more than this, too. It is called climate change for other reasons, and that is because while the global, overall, average temperature will rise, local temps could drop, or even stay the same! Say we have a 3C temp rise, global average. Some places could have a 10C increase, others a -5C decrease average! Look at coastal areas, like British Columbia, while inland the temps drop quickly. Or the British isles. Ocean currents bring warm water north, keeping these places warm, but the currents could reverse! Or vanish! Now you have temp drops, but in a local region, even with overall 3C rises... I guess my point is, localized events mean almost nothing. The true tragedy of climate change is that by the time we can really verify it is happening, it will already have happened. And some areas will have incredibly dramatic climate changes, others almost none. Think 10C average warmer, including for heat waves. Edit: just realised you sorta said this, just in a different way. Will leave this here regardless.
decremental 5y ago
Is there an estimated timeframe for when people will start to experience the impact of the climate crisis instead of only hearing about it?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Heatwaves, forest fires, and dying coral have all been experienced in the past few years by some people.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    Attributing any specific extreme weather event to global warning is problematic.
  - canal-crab 5y ago
    Regarding heatwaves, they've always happened. For example, there was a heatwave in Paris in 1911 that killed around 40,000 people. It'd be easy to find a hundred examples like that, all from before humans had emitted much CO2. Regarding forest fires, acres burned are a small fraction of what they used to be in the 1920s. https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2017_12_13_22_00_52-down.png https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20... Regarding coral, if they're having trouble because of CO2 ppm going from 300 to 400, imagine how hard they had it back when CO2 ppm was twice what it is today... or three times. Or four times. Or ten times. Edit: I'd love for someone to provide some justification for this comment to be flagged.
- k3liutZu 5y ago
  Haven't a _lot_ of people already experienced it?
- contravariant 5y ago
  Pretty sure an increase in average temperatures can be seen pretty much everywhere at this point. Though its effect on weather patterns is harder to estimate.
- evan_ 5y ago
laydn 5y ago
For the first time in my life, I experienced a massive heat wave, torrential rainfall and flooding, a forest fire and hail, all within a single month. I am NOT looking forward to what's coming in a few years.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Buckle up for the rest of your life…
- dataflow 5y ago
  This is likely just the introductory act. We'll be begging to go back to this era of floods and fires once the resulting & hard-hitting droughts + famines + wars + mass migrations + mass extinctions + etc. take their tolls (and some of them have already started to).
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  As a comment I read said, the fear isn’t that this is the new normal, the fear is that it isn’t, and worse is to come.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  I'm afraid that in a decade, humans will just accept this as our reality and forget that it wasn't always like this. In 20 years, we'll have a generation of adults who'll think our stories of years of generally calm weather sound like pure fantasy.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    We already have this every time it snows in winter in the pre-alps. People totally forgot that like 10-20 years ago "extreme snow" was kind of the norm from December to early March.
- jonp888 5y ago
  It's going to be bad. I don't expect to have a conventional retirement like my parents did. By that point, society will not longer be able to support a large cohort of people who just consume and don't contribute. I don't understand how anyone can still justify having children, knowing how they will suffer as a result of what we have done to the planet.
newman555 5y ago
still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but in really almost nothing concrete is done to stop the worst scenarios.
- canal-crab 5y ago
  Whatever current event you're concerned about, have you looked for historical precedent? Suppose you were to discover that the same kind of event had happened in, say, the early 1900s, and/or the late 1800s, before humans had emitted any appreciable amount of CO2. Would that change your opinion about whether we're in a crisis?
  - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
    Well, has it?
    - canal-crab 5y ago
      Are you asking me if heatwaves have happened before? Edit: Again, I'd love to hear some justification for this comment to be flagged. Are there any rules on this forum, or do we just get censored by anonymous people with special authorities?
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    You're looking at this the wrong way: extreme weather is not a predictable, one-off event. With climate change, we would expect to hit the extremes more often, and statistically the data has been showing us moving in this direction for years. Is it a crisis? Well, it only looks like it's going to get worse from here, and it's already not looking good…
  - adrianN 5y ago
    The current event I'm concerned about is the increase in average global temperatures caused by the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. To the best of my knowledge Earth has never warmed as quickly as it's currently warming and CO2 levels haven't been as high since before humans were around.
wiz21c 5y ago
I'm worried the map shows only US. I mean, global climate is, well, global. So how can one think about his neighbors if they are not even on the map...
- jfengel 5y ago
  The rest of the world has already seen this. The weird part is how often temperature maps look like this one: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N4thNYyzqzgBCFgF4YCpxlF7gEg=/0x0:1100x828/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1100x828):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13721849/image__7_.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N4thNYyzqzgBCFgF4YCpxlF7gEg=... Recently, the US has often had extreme cold events while the rest of the world is seeing temperature extremes. It practically looks like a conspiracy of the weather to make Americans disbelieve in climate change. Having the US be subject to heat waves might just change that.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    yep, like any revolution, action for climate change will need deaths to start...
- halgir 5y ago
  This particular article is filed in the "US Weather" category. A global perspective is important, but it doesn't exclude a local one.
vmception 5y ago
The opposition party has dwindling numbers and lives in a wasteland, gee golly whats going to happen? Yeah I get that their land votes for them, but we can just ride this one out and then have a super pac pay for relocation of a few people to specific counties within states. Opposition party just doesnt have the numbers to try the same strategy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrpopo 5y ago
Reminder: what is happening now is the result of past emissions and will keep happening year after year no matter what. After humanity finally stops emitting greenhouse gases, it will not get better, it will just stop getting worse. The earlier we act the less bad the consequences.
- gambiting 5y ago
  In fact, if we stopped emitting entirely tomorrow, things would get much worse very quickly for a few years, due to the aerosol masking effect. Basically we're actually emitting so much that our pollution is blocking out some of the heat from the sun - remove the pollution and now we have all of the greenhouse gases we had before still in the atmosphere, but we're getting the full amount of heat from the sun. Explained much better here: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/cl3ger/z/evsoc1g https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/cl3ger/z/evsoc1g
  - chaimanmeow 5y ago
    If they can make natural gas turbines send soot thousands of feet into the air like coal plants then we could buy ourselves some time. We need soot generators.
- Lutger 5y ago
  Whether that is true depends on your sense of scale. After we move to zero emissions, it will take only a couple of decades before CO2 will start to drop again, as the biosphere starts absorbing the greenhouse gases. There's some latency in temperature, much more in sealevel rise, but generally it isn't as bad as frequently depicted. I only learned this recently, I used to think we are unavoidably messed up for centuries, but that's really not the case. For my son I believe there's a scenario it will get better, not worse, in his lifetime. Though it's not a scenario I think is likely to happen. I'm not optimistic about our societies willingness and ability to do so, but all action does matter and we definitely have the possibility. Ironically, drastic and massive climate action is also the cheapest thing to do.
  - 5y ago
Izkata 5y ago
The source the Guardian links to is showing the outlook for July 31 - August 4, while the embedded image and article appear to be talking about July 25 - July 31. Before noticing the dates I'd thought the article was simply wrong and was using outdated data, it's just that next week is forecast to be cooler than this week. Edit: And then right after posting I notice the date range is actually embedded in the image, July 29 - August 2, Thursday to Monday. At least the first part of the article does seem to be mostly based on outdated data, the outlook now showing much cooler than the snapshot in the article for most of the same days.
eyelovewe 5y ago
While climate change denialists minimize and try to pretend that more analysis is needed before lifting our smallest finger to change the obvious problem (humans burning hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon in the span of 150 years) It’s actually rather urgent that we collectively acted like the singular species we are, and acted yesterday already. Don’t wait til 2030 to phase out whatever, let’s go full bore and do it now dedicating our full combined engineering might to tackle the problem. IS HUMANITY CAPABLE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION IF OUR LIVES DEPEND UPON IT? You know those films with alien invasions where humanity comes together to fight it, can you imagine traitorous factions saying the alien invasion is just a myth? Undermining all that is needed for collective action
- nelblu 5y ago
  Covid showed us that we are generally inclined to act collectively but very easily fall to conspiracy theories. I hope we ACT, although the pessimist inside me is not so sure.
- iso1631 5y ago
  We've passed stage one and two "nothing is going to happen" (there's no climate change) "something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it" (the climate change happens anyway, it's not manmade) Most people are now at stage three "maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do" (even if we stopped our emissions china would be mean) Some are progressing to stage four "maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now" (it's too late now, we're screwed)
nanna 5y ago
Human, all too human.
FartyMcFarter 5y ago
This article seems to need a reality check. If you look at current weather forecasts for the places mentioned (e.g. the capitals of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma), the highest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 100 F / 38 C, far from the mentioned 110 F / 43 C.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Here in central Kansas it's predicted to hit 100 as well. That's hardly an abnormally high temperature, at least in my (admittedly short) life so far. It might be more than 10 years ago, but not noticeably more.
- Izkata 5y ago
  More like "based on old data"; the first reference, where the image in the article came from, has already been updated with cooler temperatures. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ (Yeah, slightly different date ranges, but still a lot of overlap and it's excluded the beginning of this week in either case - which, over here in Chicago, is supposed to be the hottest part of the coming week)
kilroy123 5y ago
It's so frustrating seeing the lack of urgency to do something to reduce our emissions. I fear the US will never take the lead, and the world is hopelessly dependent on China and the EU acting.
baybal2 5y ago
Why America is getting so hot, but there is still no rainfall?
- thirsty-coucal 5y ago
  Is your premise true? https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/pcp/12/12/1895-2019?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1895&endtrendyear=2020 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/pcp/1...
  - baybal2 5y ago
    So, are the precipitation levels are going up over the years after all?
    - thirsty-coucal 5y ago
      Doesn't seem like we're experiencing a general super drought, does it.
yosito 5y ago
Considering the source, remind me in one month. I'd like to see if the predicted 110° temperatures actually happened, or if it was just media amplifying the worst possible case for the doom clicks. To go about this scientifically, we need to be comparing our predictions to reality, especially when the predictions are coming from a source incentivized to generate clicks rather than to provide an accurate view of reality.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  LOL, you must have missed Death Valley,CA breaking records with 130 degrees. I agree, think critically and vette your sources, but this kind of denial sounds like when Republicans stood around in the snow screaming global warming wasn't real because LoOk SnOw It'S nOt GeTtIng HoTtEr
  - yosito 5y ago
    > Death Valley ...
gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
It looks like Southern Ontario is going to be spared, despite our proximity to affected areas. Can anyone venture as to why it (and the Northeast US) is not going to be affected? I assume it’s some geographic or climactic quirk since I don’t expect heat domes to respect national boundaries.
- tzs 5y ago
  Probably the jet stream. Here's a wind speed map for jet stream altitudes [1]. The jet stream plays a big part in positioning heat domes [2]. [1] https://www.windy.com/?300h,15.708,-125.244,3 https://www.windy.com/?300h,15.708,-125.244,3 [2] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html
  - gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
    Oh wow that’s pretty cool. It looks like there is a current that stays mostly within Canada, with the exception of upstate NY and northern New England. It suggests that my climate will have more in common with areas 300mi to the NE vs 150mi to the SW. I know that Windsor-Detroit is in a warmer Koppen zone than pretty much every Canadian zone to the east. Continental a vs b IIRC.

118 points by pizza 5y ago

fy20 5y ago

Where did the 'heat dome' term come from? Is it actually a new kind of weather phenomenon (the Wikipedia page is from this year) or just a new term the media has been (ab)using instead of calling it a heat wave as they would before?

hanselot 5y ago
Doesn't heat dome sound way more sensational? Hard to convince people to take a wolf seriously with decades of crying about it. In fact, at this point, we are all voting for the wolf.
fulafel 5y ago
There are mentions in papers from the 1980s, eg https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02507142 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02507142 (edit: changed link, fixed from earlier where the context was minerals instead of climate and dates were in 70s)
- tpmx 5y ago
  Those talk about tank domes, salt domes, limiting dome height tests, etc etc.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    Thanks, updated.

liquidise 5y ago

> “Heat dome over North America, showing high temperatures predicted across the continent.” Such is the caption to a map showing no temperatures, or even potential heat but rather a predicted delta from regional norms. This sort of behavior was exactly why I unsubscribed from the guardian after years of support post Snowden. I have no doubt this summer has been warmer on average. Here in Denver the smoke cover from Oregon’s fires must be contributing a measurable impact itself. That said our forecast for the coming week is highs between 85-90, which feels in line for most July’s since I’ve lived here.

edrxty 5y ago
It's not even a norms delta, it's a probability of any deviation from norms. The creators (https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/) even put out a survey a couple years ago trying to figure out if anyone actually understood the data. The maps have pretty much always looked like that in the summer over the past five years.
- sschueller 5y ago
  "The 6-10 day Outlook gives the confidence that a forecaster has, given as a probability, that the observed temperature, averaged over upcoming days 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 will be in the range of one of three possible categories - below (B), normal (N), or above (A). For any calendar 5-day period, these categories can be defined by separating the 30 years of the climatology period, 1981-2010 (30 years), into the coldest 10 years, the middle 10 years, and the warmest 10 years. Because each of these categories occurs 1/3 of the time (10 times) during 1981-2010, for any particular calendar 5-day period, the probability of any category being selected at random from the 1981-2010 set of 30 observations is one in three (1/3), or 33.33%. This is also called the climatological probability. The sum of the climatological probabilities of the three categories at any point on the map is 100%. Graphical Information The colored shading on the map indicates the degree of confidence the forecaster has in the category indicated, where "B" and blue colors indicate "below-normal" and "A" and orange-red colors indicate "above normal". The darker the shading, the greater is the level of confidence. The numbers labeling the contours separating different shades gives the probability that the indicated category (A, B, or N) will occur. The probabilities of all three categories are implied on the map, and sum to 100%. The forecast probabilities given on the map generally fall far short of complete confidence (100%) in any single category. When the probability of the above (A) or below (B) category is greater than 33.33% by some amount, the probability of the opposite category declines by that amount, while the probability of the middle category remains at 33.33%. In the event that the "N" category is greater than 33.33%, the probabilities of both the "A" and "B" categories is each reduced by 1/2 the amount that the "N" category exceeds 33.33%. When the probability of "A", or "B" reaches 63.33% or higher, the odds of the opposite category reach a minimum allowed value of 3.33%, while the odds of the middle category are allowed to drop below 33.33%. The dashed contours on the map give the average of the temperature over the set of 30 observations for the calendar 5-day period during 1981-2010, in degrees Farenheit." Uff, not sure why the guardian picked that map when they could have found something more clear for the average reader, like me...

nevi-me 5y ago

We have experienced the coldest winter since 2011 in the Southern Hemisphere (at least South Africa) this year. The summer was also warmer than average. I wonder what less conservative global warming forecasts would look like, and whether the winter this year will be average in US and CA.

chrisco255 5y ago
It's been a mild summer for central and eastern US. The West has gotten all the heat and we've had higher than average rainfall in the eastern 2/3rds. Even Arizona getting a lot of rain now.
antonvs 5y ago
"Global warming" involves extremes of temperature on both ends of the scale, and "coldest winters" are not inconsistent with that. Think about a pot of hot water vs. one that's boiling. The surface of the water in the boiling pot is not smooth, it has peaks and troughs. The level of some of those troughs will be lower than the level of the water in a less energetic pot. The situation with global warming is similar, although much less simple (pots of water don't have seasons, among other things.) More energy in the atmosphere and the Earth's crust translates into more extreme temperature fluctuations, both up and down. However, the average will inevitably be higher. Basic physics doesn't allow for anything else.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  HEre on HT it may not necessary, but when talking to people not at ease with sciences, this sentence : > Basic physics doesn't allow for anything else. is very important. It means : you do not negotiate with physics. So, you do not negotiate on climate change. When I hear some politics I'm sometimes appalled by their lack of understanding of basic physics laws.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  It is more than this, too. It is called climate change for other reasons, and that is because while the global, overall, average temperature will rise, local temps could drop, or even stay the same! Say we have a 3C temp rise, global average. Some places could have a 10C increase, others a -5C decrease average! Look at coastal areas, like British Columbia, while inland the temps drop quickly. Or the British isles. Ocean currents bring warm water north, keeping these places warm, but the currents could reverse! Or vanish! Now you have temp drops, but in a local region, even with overall 3C rises... I guess my point is, localized events mean almost nothing. The true tragedy of climate change is that by the time we can really verify it is happening, it will already have happened. And some areas will have incredibly dramatic climate changes, others almost none. Think 10C average warmer, including for heat waves. Edit: just realised you sorta said this, just in a different way. Will leave this here regardless.

decremental 5y ago

Is there an estimated timeframe for when people will start to experience the impact of the climate crisis instead of only hearing about it?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Heatwaves, forest fires, and dying coral have all been experienced in the past few years by some people.
- Stevvo 5y ago
  Attributing any specific extreme weather event to global warning is problematic.
- canal-crab 5y ago
  Regarding heatwaves, they've always happened. For example, there was a heatwave in Paris in 1911 that killed around 40,000 people. It'd be easy to find a hundred examples like that, all from before humans had emitted much CO2. Regarding forest fires, acres burned are a small fraction of what they used to be in the 1920s. https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2017_12_13_22_00_52-down.png https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20... Regarding coral, if they're having trouble because of CO2 ppm going from 300 to 400, imagine how hard they had it back when CO2 ppm was twice what it is today... or three times. Or four times. Or ten times. Edit: I'd love for someone to provide some justification for this comment to be flagged.
k3liutZu 5y ago
Haven't a _lot_ of people already experienced it?
contravariant 5y ago
Pretty sure an increase in average temperatures can be seen pretty much everywhere at this point. Though its effect on weather patterns is harder to estimate.
evan_ 5y ago

laydn 5y ago

For the first time in my life, I experienced a massive heat wave, torrential rainfall and flooding, a forest fire and hail, all within a single month. I am NOT looking forward to what's coming in a few years.

saagarjha 5y ago
Buckle up for the rest of your life…
dataflow 5y ago
This is likely just the introductory act. We'll be begging to go back to this era of floods and fires once the resulting & hard-hitting droughts + famines + wars + mass migrations + mass extinctions + etc. take their tolls (and some of them have already started to).
rich_sasha 5y ago
As a comment I read said, the fear isn’t that this is the new normal, the fear is that it isn’t, and worse is to come.
trainsplanes 5y ago
I'm afraid that in a decade, humans will just accept this as our reality and forget that it wasn't always like this. In 20 years, we'll have a generation of adults who'll think our stories of years of generally calm weather sound like pure fantasy.
- hef19898 5y ago
  We already have this every time it snows in winter in the pre-alps. People totally forgot that like 10-20 years ago "extreme snow" was kind of the norm from December to early March.
jonp888 5y ago
It's going to be bad. I don't expect to have a conventional retirement like my parents did. By that point, society will not longer be able to support a large cohort of people who just consume and don't contribute. I don't understand how anyone can still justify having children, knowing how they will suffer as a result of what we have done to the planet.

newman555 5y ago

still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but in really almost nothing concrete is done to stop the worst scenarios.

canal-crab 5y ago
Whatever current event you're concerned about, have you looked for historical precedent? Suppose you were to discover that the same kind of event had happened in, say, the early 1900s, and/or the late 1800s, before humans had emitted any appreciable amount of CO2. Would that change your opinion about whether we're in a crisis?
- AlexAndScripts 5y ago
  Well, has it?
  - canal-crab 5y ago
    Are you asking me if heatwaves have happened before? Edit: Again, I'd love to hear some justification for this comment to be flagged. Are there any rules on this forum, or do we just get censored by anonymous people with special authorities?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  You're looking at this the wrong way: extreme weather is not a predictable, one-off event. With climate change, we would expect to hit the extremes more often, and statistically the data has been showing us moving in this direction for years. Is it a crisis? Well, it only looks like it's going to get worse from here, and it's already not looking good…
- adrianN 5y ago
  The current event I'm concerned about is the increase in average global temperatures caused by the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. To the best of my knowledge Earth has never warmed as quickly as it's currently warming and CO2 levels haven't been as high since before humans were around.

wiz21c 5y ago

I'm worried the map shows only US. I mean, global climate is, well, global. So how can one think about his neighbors if they are not even on the map...

jfengel 5y ago
The rest of the world has already seen this. The weird part is how often temperature maps look like this one: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N4thNYyzqzgBCFgF4YCpxlF7gEg=/0x0:1100x828/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1100x828):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13721849/image__7_.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N4thNYyzqzgBCFgF4YCpxlF7gEg=... Recently, the US has often had extreme cold events while the rest of the world is seeing temperature extremes. It practically looks like a conspiracy of the weather to make Americans disbelieve in climate change. Having the US be subject to heat waves might just change that.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  yep, like any revolution, action for climate change will need deaths to start...
halgir 5y ago
This particular article is filed in the "US Weather" category. A global perspective is important, but it doesn't exclude a local one.

vmception 5y ago

The opposition party has dwindling numbers and lives in a wasteland, gee golly whats going to happen? Yeah I get that their land votes for them, but we can just ride this one out and then have a super pac pay for relocation of a few people to specific counties within states. Opposition party just doesnt have the numbers to try the same strategy.

deleted 5y ago

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mrpopo 5y ago

Reminder: what is happening now is the result of past emissions and will keep happening year after year no matter what. After humanity finally stops emitting greenhouse gases, it will not get better, it will just stop getting worse. The earlier we act the less bad the consequences.

gambiting 5y ago
In fact, if we stopped emitting entirely tomorrow, things would get much worse very quickly for a few years, due to the aerosol masking effect. Basically we're actually emitting so much that our pollution is blocking out some of the heat from the sun - remove the pollution and now we have all of the greenhouse gases we had before still in the atmosphere, but we're getting the full amount of heat from the sun. Explained much better here: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/cl3ger/z/evsoc1g https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/cl3ger/z/evsoc1g
- chaimanmeow 5y ago
  If they can make natural gas turbines send soot thousands of feet into the air like coal plants then we could buy ourselves some time. We need soot generators.
Lutger 5y ago
Whether that is true depends on your sense of scale. After we move to zero emissions, it will take only a couple of decades before CO2 will start to drop again, as the biosphere starts absorbing the greenhouse gases. There's some latency in temperature, much more in sealevel rise, but generally it isn't as bad as frequently depicted. I only learned this recently, I used to think we are unavoidably messed up for centuries, but that's really not the case. For my son I believe there's a scenario it will get better, not worse, in his lifetime. Though it's not a scenario I think is likely to happen. I'm not optimistic about our societies willingness and ability to do so, but all action does matter and we definitely have the possibility. Ironically, drastic and massive climate action is also the cheapest thing to do.
- 5y ago

Izkata 5y ago

The source the Guardian links to is showing the outlook for July 31 - August 4, while the embedded image and article appear to be talking about July 25 - July 31. Before noticing the dates I'd thought the article was simply wrong and was using outdated data, it's just that next week is forecast to be cooler than this week. Edit: And then right after posting I notice the date range is actually embedded in the image, July 29 - August 2, Thursday to Monday. At least the first part of the article does seem to be mostly based on outdated data, the outlook now showing much cooler than the snapshot in the article for most of the same days.

eyelovewe 5y ago

While climate change denialists minimize and try to pretend that more analysis is needed before lifting our smallest finger to change the obvious problem (humans burning hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon in the span of 150 years) It’s actually rather urgent that we collectively acted like the singular species we are, and acted yesterday already. Don’t wait til 2030 to phase out whatever, let’s go full bore and do it now dedicating our full combined engineering might to tackle the problem. IS HUMANITY CAPABLE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION IF OUR LIVES DEPEND UPON IT? You know those films with alien invasions where humanity comes together to fight it, can you imagine traitorous factions saying the alien invasion is just a myth? Undermining all that is needed for collective action

nelblu 5y ago
Covid showed us that we are generally inclined to act collectively but very easily fall to conspiracy theories. I hope we ACT, although the pessimist inside me is not so sure.
iso1631 5y ago
We've passed stage one and two "nothing is going to happen" (there's no climate change) "something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it" (the climate change happens anyway, it's not manmade) Most people are now at stage three "maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do" (even if we stopped our emissions china would be mean) Some are progressing to stage four "maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now" (it's too late now, we're screwed)

nanna 5y ago

Human, all too human.

FartyMcFarter 5y ago

This article seems to need a reality check. If you look at current weather forecasts for the places mentioned (e.g. the capitals of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma), the highest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 100 F / 38 C, far from the mentioned 110 F / 43 C.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
Here in central Kansas it's predicted to hit 100 as well. That's hardly an abnormally high temperature, at least in my (admittedly short) life so far. It might be more than 10 years ago, but not noticeably more.
Izkata 5y ago
More like "based on old data"; the first reference, where the image in the article came from, has already been updated with cooler temperatures. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ (Yeah, slightly different date ranges, but still a lot of overlap and it's excluded the beginning of this week in either case - which, over here in Chicago, is supposed to be the hottest part of the coming week)

kilroy123 5y ago

It's so frustrating seeing the lack of urgency to do something to reduce our emissions. I fear the US will never take the lead, and the world is hopelessly dependent on China and the EU acting.

baybal2 5y ago

Why America is getting so hot, but there is still no rainfall?

thirsty-coucal 5y ago
Is your premise true? https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/pcp/12/12/1895-2019?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1895&endtrendyear=2020 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/pcp/1...
- baybal2 5y ago
  So, are the precipitation levels are going up over the years after all?
  - thirsty-coucal 5y ago
    Doesn't seem like we're experiencing a general super drought, does it.

yosito 5y ago

Considering the source, remind me in one month. I'd like to see if the predicted 110° temperatures actually happened, or if it was just media amplifying the worst possible case for the doom clicks. To go about this scientifically, we need to be comparing our predictions to reality, especially when the predictions are coming from a source incentivized to generate clicks rather than to provide an accurate view of reality.

effingwewt 5y ago
LOL, you must have missed Death Valley,CA breaking records with 130 degrees. I agree, think critically and vette your sources, but this kind of denial sounds like when Republicans stood around in the snow screaming global warming wasn't real because LoOk SnOw It'S nOt GeTtIng HoTtEr
- yosito 5y ago
  > Death Valley ...

gunfighthacksaw 5y ago

It looks like Southern Ontario is going to be spared, despite our proximity to affected areas. Can anyone venture as to why it (and the Northeast US) is not going to be affected? I assume it’s some geographic or climactic quirk since I don’t expect heat domes to respect national boundaries.

tzs 5y ago
Probably the jet stream. Here's a wind speed map for jet stream altitudes [1]. The jet stream plays a big part in positioning heat domes [2]. [1] https://www.windy.com/?300h,15.708,-125.244,3 https://www.windy.com/?300h,15.708,-125.244,3 [2] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html
- gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  Oh wow that’s pretty cool. It looks like there is a current that stays mostly within Canada, with the exception of upstate NY and northern New England. It suggests that my climate will have more in common with areas 300mi to the NE vs 150mi to the SW. I know that Windsor-Detroit is in a warmer Koppen zone than pretty much every Canadian zone to the east. Continental a vs b IIRC.