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A stationary jet stream is fueling intense heat worldwide
- sdflhasjd 3y agoArchive as the server seems to be struggling: https://archive.is/yKR1Q https://archive.is/yKR1Q
- retrocryptid 3y agoJust imagine how much worse it would be if global climate change wasn't a Chinese Communist Party hoax intended to sap 'merica of our precious bodily fluids!
- mistrial9 3y agono - its radical environmentalists trying to take away your FREEDOM gasoline
- renewiltord 3y agoAs far as I can see, radical environmentalists are almost all anti-nuclear, sometimes anti-wind and anti-solar, and overall prefer to live in sprawl vs. cities. I think they might well be the problem.
- retrocryptid 3y agoAbsolutely. Anti-nuke Germans are responsible for America-Hating Woke Green Commies in Berkeley taking away my gas stoves, incandescent light bulbs and 180+ years of burning coal and 130+ years of burning oil at industrial levels.
- bruce511 3y agoI like how "world-wide" is code for "northern hemisphere".
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago90% of humans live in the northern hemisphere.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoSouthie here - it is bloody cold here right now - 12C.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoWe should be super concerned if there were a heat wave on the south end this time of year :-)
- fluoridation 3y agoWell, actually just a couple weeks ago I was riding to work in my summer kit in ~15° C weather. It was only after last week's rain that temperatures finally dropped to something reasonably seasonal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mistrial9 3y agocheck out "McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World"
- photonbeam 3y agoIs there a modern version of this?
- Zigurd 3y agoNarukawa's AuthaGraph map is actually a family of projections so you don't have to settle on one bias/distortion. I like Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion projection, with the North Pole roughly in the middle. That is a very practical way to present the planet laid flat because of shortest international flight routes frequently being over the Arctic.
- xwdv 3y agoIn a closed system like Earth, is cold air at the geographical scale a non-renewable resource? Meaning once we warm up all the air, is there a way to make more cold air again at significant scales?
- WillPostForFood 3y agoThe Earth isn't a closed system. Most of the heat that is getting trapped by C02 is coming from the sun, and we continually bleed atmosphere into space. The average temp of the universe is -455F, so cold is the most abundant resource.
- epolanski 3y agoTechnically speaking I don't think you can measure the "temperature of the universe". Temperature depends on the kinetic energy of a certain amount of whatever molecules, but the universe is essentially empty/void, thus there's nothing really to measure the temperature of. I know that it isn't strictly empty/void, but for a temperature related measurement it essentially is.
- roywiggins 3y agohttps://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-temperature/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-temperature... > in the deepest depths of intergalactic space — an object placed there would gain or lose energy until it reached the background temperature of that light left over from the Big Bang: 2.725 K.
- mrguyorama 3y agoWhile true, it would take a very very long time. There simply are not enough molecules of anything in "space" to effectively and efficiently transport heat, and we even struggle to keep craft in space cool because the only reliable source of heat transfer is black body radiation from your craft. The heat capacity of space is nearly non-existent.
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- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoReplace jet stream with El Niño/la Niño, and you have your layman title. Of course, this is a spectacular year since its been a while since there have been a La niña sandwiched between 2 el Niño events, contiguously. Not sure when that happened last.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago"Jet Stream" is more familiar to those in Europe I'd imagine.
- basisword 3y agoYep. We hear about the jet stream regularly in the UK. I see the El Niño stuff lots online but no idea what it is or if it impacts UK/Europe.
- HWR_14 3y agoEl Nino/La Nina refer to Pacific Ocean current patterns, and thus matter especially to people on the Pacific coasts. You hear about it because this includes people in California and Washington US states (among others), which are overrepresented on this board, as well as all of China, Japan, South East Asia etc. However, they can produce global effects, as the pacific ocean is really big. In the UK, you probably hear about the Gulf Stream a lot.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoI grew up hearing about how the jet stream was going to affect the weather, and I lived in Indiana (US) - and I lived there until my mid-30s.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> its been a while since there have been a La niña sandwiched between 2 el Niño events, contiguously. Not sure when that happened last. 2014-16, 1986-88 and 1957-59 since 1950 [1]. (Before that, 1913-14 and 1940-42 [2].) [1] https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitorin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño#cite_note-BoM_El_Nino-14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño#cite_note-BoM_El_Nino-...
- photochemsyn 3y agoGood overview and background here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/jet-stream-is-climate-change-causing-more-blocking-weather-events/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/jet-stream-is-climate-change-cau... Seems like an active area of research, as climate models don't capture these large-scale blocking events well. They're not a new phenomenon brought on by warming, but their scale and intensity might increase due to increased moisture in the atmosphere and Arctic amplification. A warming Arctic means a lower summertime temperature differential between polar and mid-latitude zones and hence a weaker jet stream more likely to meander about, which leads to these blocking events.
- joecool1029 3y agohttps://archive.is/yKR1Q https://archive.is/yKR1Q (it wont have the graphic, but the article is there) Not because it's paywalled, just because Yale didn't put it on sufficient hosting to serve a giant 13MB gif and it's throwing 500 errors. EDIT: Added the graphic converted to webm here: https://webmshare.com/play/mRWR4 https://webmshare.com/play/mRWR4
- reportgunner 3y ago[flagged]
- Deukhoofd 3y agoSeasonal heat differences are not really a good explanation for "hottest temperatures ever measured".
- reportgunner 3y ago[flagged]
- Deukhoofd 3y agoI was referring to the current record-breaking temperatures over most of Southern Europe and North Africa, which is only expected to rise, not global averages. https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/simultaneous-heatwaves-hit-northern-hemisphere-summer-of-extremes https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/simultaneous-heatwaves-...
- reportgunner 3y agoInteresting read, thanks !
- sdflhasjd 3y agoThe jet stream would normally wiggle a bit more and that would spread the weather about instead of letting stagnant hotspots form.
- bratbag 3y agoIf you had looked at the article instead of getting annoyed by a title, then you would know that.
- reportgunner 3y ago[flagged]
- zackmorris 3y agoOf course the cause is global warming. This is one effect, but another is the Rocky Mountain rain shadow over the midwestern US: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-meridian-where-the-great-plains-used-to-begin-now-moving-east/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-merid... For decades most of us have assumed that the warm zone over the tropics would get wider, driving desertification towards the poles. But what's more likely is that the rain shadow effect will work along the east-west axis with the prevailing winds over each region of the world. So the US will lose the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas as they acquire the precipitation level of Wyoming. Arguably Oklahoma and Texas are on the cusp now. The Ogallala aquifer will get pumped dry even faster as the breadbasket states reach harder for irrigation in desperation. Basically the drought that states like Nebraska are experiencing now is going to be the new normal on a long enough timescale (a few decades at most).
- skymast 3y ago[flagged]
- thumbuddy 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account for posting unsubstantive/flamebait comments and ignoring our request to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- joncrane 3y agoQuestion: will the amount of moisture in the air remain at a net neutral balance? If so, will the precipitation fall elsewhere? What areas do we expect to get more precipitation? What borderline arable lands will become arable as a result of climate change, if any?
- FreshStart 3y agoAs citizens expect the state to uphold the old world despite physics saying nay, tax levls inside and outside of the empire should increase until they don't. Once that happens, the "stabilizing" influence sphere shrinks rapidly. I'm honestly not very eager to see that world..
- kragen 3y agoit's not worldwide, it got down to freezing here last night, which is unusual even though it's the middle of the winter
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y agoNot sure where „here“ is, but that is also expected from a more stationary jet streams. You get cold and hot spots. If global temperatures were rising 1.5C uniformaly around the globe, it would maybe not be so bad. But the extremes are also getting extremer.
- kragen 3y agobuenos aires. yes, agreed
- epolanski 3y agoYour argument sounds like "how can there be global hunger? I just ate lasagna".
- kragen 3y agoyes, there is clearly not a worldwide famine if everyone in my city is eating lasagna 'global' is ambiguous between 'worldwide' and 'somewhere in the world', but 'worldwide' unambiguously means 'everywhere in the world', and in fact literally half the world is not experiencing intense heat right now
- Daishiman 3y agoArgentina is experiencing a hotter-than-normal winter and we just came through with the biggest drought in 60 years. Don't be pedantic.
- kragen 3y agoaccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires#Climate the average low in july in buenos aires is 7.5 degrees and the record low is -5.4. last night it was -1. maybe our winter has been hotter than normal, though that isn't my perception, but the supposed worldwide intense heat isn't purported to be a months-long phenomenon, but rather a phenomenon of the current week, which has in fact been a much colder week than normal i don't think it's being pedantic to point out that actually half the world is in the middle of winter, not experiencing intense heat, and that actually people live here too
- wolverinemelody 3y agoThat's crazy stuff
- giardini 3y agoWhere is the weather improving?
- retrocryptid 3y agoAntarctic summers are getting positively balmy.
- PheonixPharts 3y agoThe problem with climate change, in particular global warming (i.e. adding energy to the system), is that it increases the variance of the system. This means that the system becomes harder to predict, and we're not looking at a mere "redistribution" of weather. It's very possible for weather to get worse (i.e. disruptive to the current functioning of the local ecosystem) everywhere I would not at all be surprised if some areas suffering from extreme heat right now become unlivably cold in the coming decades. The problem with climate change is that it does not, in a human life time, lead to a new normal. If these new weather patterns were here to stay, we could adapt. what we'll get instead is constant changing which becomes increasingly resource intensive to survive.
- MandieD 3y agoAnecdata from northern Bavaria: we’ve lived in our current house since 2016, and have yet to regret not prepaying plowing service - it simply hasn’t put down more than a few cm at a time without it soon being warm enough to melt away. I’ve had to manually shovel in front of our garage twice, and both of those times, I probably could have chanced it. It used to snow frequently and heavily enough that the cul-de-sac got together to prepay snow removal for our garages. We also only burned about 600 liters of oil last winter in a house that has a 4500 liter tank. Part of that was conserving in order to send Putin as little money as possible, but a lot of it was just a really mild winter… like the last several. And this region has also started producing some nice, light-bodied red wines over the past decade (at the likely cost of its Eiswein tradition). On the downside, we’re getting more summer days that make me contemplate nagging my husband into drilling a vent for air conditioning into our bedroom. And we’ve started to need to water our wildflower yard a few times each summer to prevent it from completely baking, even though it requires less moisture than a stereotypical green grass lawn, and the country as a whole has started having forest fires, though nothing like the terrors seen in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. It’s been 27-30 degrees C (80-85 Fahrenheit) the last few days, and should be for the next week or so, with nighttime lows sufficient to really cool things off if you open the windows overnight. But we had near-40 degree temps that awful week last summer about when the UK got their first taste of it. So, sort of?
- epolanski 3y agoIt's just depressing, every year it feels worse. I'm resisting the urge to buy AC because I feel like AC makes the problem worse, not better. Especially as electricity in Italy is 90% gas produced, I just think it's such a nonsense to buy AC and then make global warming worse. But I'm frying since 2 weeks at this point. I barely remember a week or two of cold weather this year in winter. The difference in winter temperatures and amount of snow in Poland is just gigantic. I remember every christmas having snow in Poland, I remember up to -30 degrees temperatures in southern poland, lately it's been rainy and warm 7/8 degrees C. The only thing that can save the planet is a fair carbon tax, because the situation feels more and more desperate every day, we need to slow this thing up. Heat is not the only problem, both the countries I have more family (Italy/Poland) are short in water and it is getting desperately worse every year. Climate-change driven disasters are getting so common here in Italy, we've had just a disaster flood in northern Italy 2 months ago after such a long draught. I've never ever in my life seen 38 days of rain over a 43 days span from May to June in southern Italy. I am seriously considering emigration as an answer to climate changes. I seriously cannot even fathom the pain tourists visiting Italy in summer (at least those going to historical cities like Rome or Naples) endure.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> I'm resisting the urge to buy AC because I feel like AC makes the problem worse, not better. It's just a heat pump, and fairly efficient all considered. And not nearly as damaging to the climate as the folks who live in cold places and use fossil fuels to heat their homes. I don't think I'd feel guilty about getting some relief, it's not unreasonable.
- joshuahedlund 3y agoCurrent heat wave is pretty insane. Some stats here: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-scorching-summer-of-2023-reaches-mind-blowing-high-temperatures/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-scorching-sum... - El Paso has shattered the old record for consecutive 100+ degree highs by several days and still going strong - Phoenix just broke the old record for consecutive 110+ degree highs with the highs forecasted to continue for over a week with no end in sight. Phoenix has also broken the record for consecutive lows above 90 - so no relief from the heat. Antarcic sea ice seems to be broken as well - https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-... - switch to "Antarctic" and click "Show All Years" to see how all the other years overlap each other and 2023 is just... way off.
- whalesalad 3y agoThe collapse of the jet stream as we know it has been feared by many for quite some time. It has been weakening and changing positions due to global warming. In a decade places like California and Texas will be unlivable.
- phkahler 3y agoMy pet hypothesis on the flip to glaciation is that the Northern Ferrel Cell collapses [1], allowing the merger of the Polar and Hadley cells. One result of that would be polar air flowing down all the way to the equator over the entire northern hemisphere. Another effect would be prolonged exposure of rising equatorial air to the upper atmosphere (close to space) which would cool it on the way to the pole. Once the north is snow covered this pattern might become very stable for 100K years until some other tipping point is reached (say low ocean levels). IANA climate researcher, so this is just wild speculation on my part and may have no basis in reality ;-) But this smoothing of the jet stream seems like it could be a precursor to the evening out of flows I imagine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation
- _nalply 3y agoYour hypothesis reminds me of the Gulf stream collapse hypothesis. Because the Gulf stream heats Europe this would mean Europe will be cooler and probably drier than now. I remember that in the seventies in Switzerland people were discussing the return of the ice age. The glaciers covered more than 80% of Switzerland and carved out the lakes in the plateau and on the edge of the Alps. I vividly remember an artist's visualization of this event: a large bluish glacier looming behind the houses of the old city of Bern.
- cj 3y agoSide note: I think it's going to be really interesting how governments decide to respond to rising oceans / temps (think places like Miami, Manhattan, any coastal city at sea level). Seems like there's 2 options: 1) Encourage people to migrate to other cities and essentially "give up" on saving the city 2) Spend a lot of money trying to fortify existing cities I'm guessing it will start with #2 (technically it's already happening) and then eventually we'll get to #1 but only when the situation is truly dire after which it becomes a politically favorable philosophy. And then the question is how long do we think it will take for #1 to happen (assuming it will happen in the first place). 1-2 decades? Half a century? Multiple centuries? There must be some contrarian billionaires out there buying up tons of land in undeveloped areas with a multi-decade idea that the land will 100x in value if/when mass migrations occur. That said, I would guess that most easily habitable areas of the US are already pretty well built up. Maybe what's more likely to happen to migration to suburbs and eventually to rural areas, until those areas are in such demand that the suburbs become metros and rural becomes suburbs. /end of armchair science ramblings
- autoexec 3y agoIf we were smart we'd at least stop using tax payer money to pay for fixing all the damage done in places where flooding is routine. People will probably need the government to pay them to move though since no one is buying a house that floods every single year. What we should be doing is locating rural areas expected to be least hit by climate change and building them up to accommodate the people who will be displaced including climate refugees from elsewhere. We could even be requiring refugees and certain immigrants to move into and live in certain areas of the country (for some number of years at least) to help get those places started. Sadly, immigration policy isn't being enforced much these days at all and it's kind of scary to think of what will happen when people start to become really desperate. When they're not just looking for better paying jobs and instead don't have clean water or homes to go back to. In any case, it's going to get a lot hotter and a lot more crowded in the near future, and it'll be a balancing act to get more and more people packed into spaces without it becoming more people than a given area can sustainably support. High population density is never good for the local environment and we don't want to make a bad situation worse by creating or allowing slums.
- _8j50 3y agoIs there any place that is safe from catastrophes like this? Anywhere near a river and a mountain with seasonal snowing is what I used to think but canada which has plenty of this is struggling with wildfires. I thought the wetness from the snow season is enough to prevent a wildfire
- jacquesm 3y ago> Is there any place that is safe from catastrophes like this? Yes, but they have no atmosphere.