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Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees
- hhlbf 5y agoNice, you could boil a cup of water for your tea just by putting it outside.
- shoaloak 5y agoMaybe convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius?
- tomalpha 5y ago48.8C [0] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58130893 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58130893
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pkulak 5y agoHopefully that's a record in Fahrenheit...
- celticninja 5y agoNot even half way to boiling really. Although it refers to Europe, it is using farenheit as its scale, as it is a US based publication. Although for that reason temperature measurements should always include the type for reference.
- bpodgursky 5y ago"Halfway" from where?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoFreezing (0C). Halfway through the liquid phase of water. Seems like an at-least-somewhat reasonable starting point.
- Tepix 5y agoHalfway from 0°C, the freezing point of water.
- LogicX 5y ago0? To 100?
- o_m 5y agoIt also depends on the altitude. At a high enough altitude it would be boiling.
- exporectomy 5y agoIt's an important point that multiplying and dividing temperatures in F or C makes no sense. Some people are somehow assuming half way from freezing which is arbitrary. Would a F user assume it means half way from 32F or 0F?
- montalbano 5y agoEven with Celsius, perhaps not impossible at the right altitude, low convection, and with a dark color for better radiative absorption.
- scns 5y agoMaybe, with the right lens...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yongjik 5y agoPfft, just step outside and you'll never have to worry about tea for the rest of your life!
- huhtenberg 5y ago48.8°C
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoIt's Fahrenheit. I'm not even sure if this is deliberate clickbait or not, but that the article puts Celcius before Fahrenheit elsewhere suggests it is. I could hardly believe these temperatures; it's 49°C apparently.
- enriquto 5y agothat's 48.8 degrees, in europe (and elsewhere in the world)
- edhelas 5y agoTip: the world uses Metric system. USA is the exception.
- FredPret 5y agoWhat a relief that we live in the computer age and you can convert units essentially instantly
- rootusrootus 5y agoUK uses miles for distance, stones for weight, and I'm pretty certain that many things in the US are measured using metric. The real question I have is ... who really cares? I certainly don't complain when someone uses a celsius temperature, I just convert it to terms I'm more comfortable with.
- dimitrios1 5y ago> who really cares Engineers, Scientists, Mechanics, Carpenters, etc.
- rootusrootus 5y agoNo, these people do not care. People on the Internet care. Engineers, scientists, mechanics, and carpenters in the US do just fine with imperial measurements.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoPeople who work in varying units all the time and for whom a conversion is second nature mostly DGAF.
- anyfoo 5y agoCelsius is as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. Really, it's the one unit where it does not matter. Meters, kilogram, seconds, volt, ampere... they all stand in relation to each other. Celsius doesn't, you'd have to go to Kelvin for that (which is derived from Celsius, but Celsius is still useless by itself). I'm European, grew up with Celsius and am therefore more comfortable with it, so hardly any bias there.
- olivermarks 5y agoHow far back do the records go? That wasn't in the article. I'm also interested in where the temperature was taken - hard surface aircraft runways, sun traps etc are often a lot hotter than the overall average temperature.
- nerbert 5y agoIsn't it the meteorological standard that temperature should be taken in the shadow, 1m from the ground? Maybe other factors are taken into account.
- olivermarks 5y agoThat's what I understood but recently there has bee some questioning of where data has been captured
- shmde 5y agoIn India there is a running joke amongst physics teachers/professors that whenever a student forgets to write unit of measurement of the final answers they are mocked by saying 120 degrees what ? Banana ? Apple ? Centigrade ? Applies to this title too.
- alexgartrell 5y agoI don't think it's particularly ambiguous since anything other than Fahrenheit would imply that everyone is dead.
- decremental 5y agoIt doesn't apply to this title. You'd have to be pretty dumb to think it's even possible for the temperature there to be 120c. Given the number and what it's describing it's easy to figure out which measure is being used. All this whinging over c/f is unnecessary.
- Asraelite 5y agoAnd there are memes mocking teachers for doing exactly that, because it's just ridiculous pedantry when the unit is very clear from context.
- scrollaway 5y agoThis is indeed a bad title, and yet those professors you're talking about sound like assholes. I remember being mocked by my professors at school as well when making a mistake. All it did was make me resent them for being assholes to me, it didn't teach me to use units more correctly. If instead they simply had said "Celcius or Farenheit? You have to be explicit, because ...", I would have learned something and it would have stuck with me. Professors being nice to students makes the students want to be nice in return, and want to learn as a result. I still resent every single one of my high school professor that did this sort of shit. All they achieved was getting me to drop out. Joke's on them, I pursued the career they mocked and did better at it than they did at theirs. And when I see other professors, coaches, teachers and mentors do this kind of shit to students today, I honestly want to slap them silly. This is why I'll continue mentoring whoever I can. Education is the single most important factor in our survival as a species, especially now.
- pmlnr 5y agoEurope and °F in the same sentence is a terrible choice.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoNot for an article that will be read (from the perspective of Axios) by 99% american audience.
- ojagodzinski 5y ago> 120 degrees please stop using dumb people units of measure.
- f32jhnjk33jj 5y agoI don't like Europe. Hard work is punished by an exponential progressive tax system and laziness is very welcome.
- lhorie 5y agoThat's 48.8 Celsius for the non-americans. Scrolling through the tweets, some people are saying it's likely a short spike in temperature due to foehn winds[0] and that this reading doesn't really mean much due to the source of the reading. Here's an interesting thread nitpicking things apart[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind [1] https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1425424519129407489 https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1425424519129407489
- hef19898 5y agoLike picking a od temperatures in the alps, near a lake, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Cold air sinks down, and gets stored down there. Good for records, bad for general temp monitoring. Doesn't change the fact that these high temps are really bad.
- makomk 5y agoYeah, if the replies to that tweet are to be believed there have been even higher measurements from similar European weather stations under similar circumstances that simply weren't recognized as records due to the measurement issues.
- q1w2 5y agoGlobal warming is about average temperature increases. Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world. It does more harm than good to raise the climate change alarm for these events, and requires some statistical gymnastics to conclusively tie it to global warming. The real alarms are more than sufficient.
- yokaze 5y ago> Global warming is about average temperature increases. Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world. That is why it got rebranded to climate change. Yes, it is about the global average temperature, but that is too abstract for people to understand, and exactly gets discussed when "they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world." > Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world. Everything and anything gives climate change deniers ammunition. I think, it doesn't make sense to try to placate people, which are essentially inaccessible to decades of scientific reports, and more and more news like this one. No need to self-censure here. > It does more harm than good to raise the climate change alarm for these events, and requires some statistical gymnastics to conclusively tie it to global warming You do not have to conclusively tie individual events to global warming. The point here is, that those news come in more and more often. It is something people directly experience. And that is very much a real alarm.
- HenryKissinger 5y agoThis is not the case with Italy, but what are we going to do with uninhabitable areas in the future? Think the horn of Africa or parts of the Middle East. Large parts of MENA are already de facto lawless areas, where the official government doesn't exert any meaningful control, due to political factors. Now throw in deadly year-round climates on top. Every piece of land on this planet is claimed as sovereign territory by one state or another, except Antarctica. What if millions of square miles of land become progressively climate no man's lands? Will local governments even bother claiming these lands for themselves?
- bserge 5y agoWhat? Extract the resources and not live there. Settle Antarctica. Murder the mass refugees. The usual shit. And yeah, countries will claim and fight over useless pieces of land. There's plenty of people who can be sent to die defending or occupying it. Don't like reality? Downvote and live in lalaland until a "sudden tragedy" happens "out of nowhere".
- Inate_Hikkers 5y agoIran-Iraq War vibes, tfw lose 100k men only for status quo antebellum. if i get drafted i am deserting to Russia ASAP.
- bserge 5y agoAfghanistan now, lol. What a load of bullshit.
- anyfoo 5y agodang, can you edit the title to maybe say "120°F/48.8°C" or some such? Lest most of the comments continue to be by people demonstrating how smart they are to realize that the scale must be Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. (And I'm saying that as someone from Europe who grew up with Celsius.)
- samizdis 5y agoProbably important to note that the temperature reading hasn't been confirmed: The intrigue: There are some questions about the validity of the temperature reading, however. Randy Cerveny, the World Meteorological Organization's rapporteur for weather records, told the Associated Press the reading is “suspicious, so we’re not going to make any immediate determination.” “It doesn’t sound terribly plausible,” Cerveny said. “But we’re not going to dismiss it.”
- perardi 5y agoYes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. Such as: the feedback mechanisms that may come into play here. Europe, broadly, hasn’t been big on AC. That may have to change, as 322 Kelvin is just not bearable. But that means more power use…which means more energy use…which probably comes from fossil fuels…which means more issues with climate change.
- snemvalts 5y agoDepends where you live. Germany has done an idiotic 180 away from nuclear, but France is heavily into it. https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/
- saiya-jin 5y agoBut France isn't building any new, is it. A slow phase-out is what is aligned for near future, and almost entirely replacing it with fossil fuels
- stjohnswarts 5y agoEurope is looking to mow down US forests for "climate friendly" "carbon neutral" power plants. https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenergy-climate https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenerg...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- merpnderp 5y ago20 years ago we should have started moving to nuclear. 20 years from now we'll be saying the same thing.
- sevagh 5y agoIt's not about being smug, put fucking European units in an article about European temperatures in a European location. Not everybody knows who or what Axios is, but we know what Europe and Sicily are.
- alexose 5y agoThe IPCC is due to release a more comprehensive look at solar geoengineering in 2022. I say we start planning for it now, and be ready to roll it out if and when the climate models predict that it's safe enough to do so.
- merpnderp 5y agoWe've known for a while we can trivially block solar irradiation. What we don't know is if we can do it without making things worse. Geoengineering will be a lot more dangerous than just switching the world to nuclear power.
- alexose 5y agoI would argue two points here: - Switching the world to nuclear power would require global cooperation, hundreds of billions of dollars, and 20+ years of construction - Things are already quite bad Now, I don't want to start messing with the earth's albedo all willy nilly. But if our climate models suggest that this could be a viable stopgap that can be deployed for less than we spend on corn subsidies, then we should do it.
- kansface 5y agoIt seems no one read the article: > The intrigue: There are some questions about the validity of the temperature reading, however. Randy Cerveny, the World Meteorological Organization's rapporteur for weather records, told the Associated Press the reading is “suspicious, so we’re not going to make any immediate determination.” > “It doesn’t sound terribly plausible,” Cerveny said. “But we’re not going to dismiss it.”
- smarx007 5y agoThe suspicion is between 47.0 and 48.8 degrees C, i.e. whether the 1977 heat record was beaten in a well-documented manner. There is no suspicion of scorching heat.
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoWe need to mandate (by appropriately subsidizing improvements while taxing externalities) houses become more energy efficient at heating and cooling, so we can use as little AC and heating as possible and try to stop some of the runaway energy usage due to extreme weather events. Install window fans, ceiling fans, attic fans, use evaporative coolers in dry climates, install H/ERVs. Change your AC and heating to a heat-pump model if you need both. Try to tap into geothermal where possible. If we continue treating home construction as copy-paste races to the bottom for cost then we'll see AC and heating usage climb through the room as extreme weather events become more frequent.
- exporectomy 5y agoWhat's wrong with heavy AC/heating use during extreme weather events? You say runaway as if there's some sort of feedback loop. Insulating houses is balance between cost of insulating and cost of heating/cooling. It's no use spending more on insulation than you save in power use. So "as much as possible" is a wrong goal, as well as being obviously unachievable.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago> What's wrong with heavy AC/heating use during extreme weather events? You say runaway as if there's some sort of feedback loop. Emissions is the feedback loop. I'm not talking about spending money. Using more heavy AC/heating during extreme weather events means we use more energy which makes it even harder to bring renewables online because as it is renewables aren't cutting it. Of course with money it makes no sense to spend money on insulation if you're only going to spend a fraction of that on AC costs for extreme events, but that's because externalities are not being passed on to emissions costs.
- exporectomy 5y agoExtreme events are rare by definition so I don't think the energy use is significant in exacerbating climate change.
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- john579 5y agoWow, that's cool. Looks like we are coming out of the last ice age. We've been waiting 10,000 years for this. Finally.
- falsaberN1 5y agoWeird. 3 years ago, on the 2nd and 3rd of August in a particular area in northwest Spain I pass by at times, there were 53ºC. It felt like inescapable death, and it was 100% relative humidity to boot, and residences usually don't have anything like AC installed by default. The locals remember it well (just mention "those really hot days 3 years ago") and I remember the horror of seeing that number on the forecast and urban/house thermometers. And the bad luck to have to be there at that moment. I wonder why it was not registered? In fact, the highest registered one is like 43ºC for that area, but I've been there other times with a "comfortable" 45 or more. Does it need the city hall to pursue registering? Can the city (a highly touristic one) ignore it to not scare away tourists? (there were like 2000 casualties just for two days, and "Death Valley but with humidity cranked up to 11" doesn't sound like a good slogan). That said, since that summer temperatures went back to below 30-ish in that region, it was clearly a freak occurrence, but I wonder why it's not officially acknowledged.
- Oletros 5y agoBecause those thermometers are not calibrated and they are not meant to register official temperatures They don´t follow the procedures for record temps