- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
A heatwave continues to grip large parts of Europe, with authorities in many countries issuing health warnings amid searing temperatures.
Southern Spain is the worst-affected region, with temperatures in the mid-40s Celsius recorded in Seville and neighbouring areas.
A new heat record for June of 46C was set on Saturday in the town of El Granado, according to Spain’s national weather service, which also said this month is on track to be the hottest June on record.
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While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.
Not that hard after all.
From a scientific point of view this is correct, the climate system is too complex to say this particular event is due to climate change. Exceptional events happened in the past too. So you can only draw conclusions from larger statistics. What’s solid science is the increasing averages, increasing frequencies of extreme events etc. If it was scientifically informed, that’s what this kind of sentence mean.
Scientists do actually make attempts to investigate the contribution of the trends to specific events, it’s called extreme event attribution, but it is a very young field and the error bars on everything are still huge. That said,
The American Meteorological Society stated in 2016 that “the science has now advanced to the point that we can detect the effects of climate change on some events with high confidence”. [12]
But the quote from the article was strictly correct in saying “it’s hard”.
It started out hotter than it would be and the heatwave is at least a few degrees more severe than it would be otherwise.
We cant link this unusual weather to Climate change… but its unusual weather thats never been seen before at this frequency or ferocity. Its a mystery~!
man if only there was a way to link the changing climate to climate change
There’s a basic assumption that the climate of an area is fixed. We don’t really have a good mechanism for adjusting the climate of an area quickly. But eventually you have to say that the weather hasn’t been hotter than normal for a decade, this is just the new normal.
That sentence perfectly states the difficulty though. The trend: easy to link. One individual event: not that easy.
“It’s hard to link changes in climate to climate change”
Is the author stupid?
No, individual extreme events are not “changes in climate”. It’s easy to say that the rise in heatwaves is caused by climate change but it’s much harder to prove that this specific individual heatwave would never have happened were it not for climate change.
The average global temperature has been rising steadily with greenhouse gas emissions, for over 50 years, but sure we’ll just ignore that and say it’s impossible to know.
We only have the one planet, sometimes you can’t get multiple data sets. But you can certainly study the things that are happening and make predictions based on that.
No, you’re missing the point. We have conclusively “linked changes in climate to climate change” as your comment eloquently put it. That’s not really up for debate. But weather systems are extremely complex and extreme events have always occurred. So you can’t say that this one specific heatwave is caused only because of this trend.
When it comes to the urgency of doing something about it, that doesn’t matter. It’s absolutely sufficient to say “this type of event will occur increasingly often” to establish that it is an existential crisis. You don’t have to be able to prove anything at all about this one very hot week in order to say that it is probably the single most important issue for us to tackle (along with the politics that prevent us from doing that).
But we don’t have the science and statistics to generally link individual events to a trend in isolation, and we shouldn’t misrepresent the science that way.
Have they considered spending 5% of their GDP on weapons? That will surely save humanity.
There are steps needed to slow global warming and become carbon neutral. Those don’t matter much if someone shows up and machine guns your town and loots it.
Honestly if they spend that on weapons and then use it lower the population it could help.
Shoot maybe Thanos was right…
It’s an endless loop if you think about it
Maybe because of global warming.
Nah, its because of the gay frogs
Watch them get to 50C in a few years
Dont be so modest. 60°C
Such an excellent photo, too
You’re going trigger boomers with that map. I love it.
I have to ask, why is that?
Boomers/conspiracy theorists think that the news organisations are using darker red to scare people into falling for climate change.
Oh wow, havent heard of that one, thanks for the clarification!
The Mediterranean is 4-6°C warmer than usually at this time of year
I had to convert from Common to Freedom for this one. Are y’all ok over there? I’m used to that kind of heat here in the desert but goodness I couldn’t imagine 115f near the coast y’all must be dying 😬
The south of spain usually has dry air, it’s at 12% right now.
But even in germany it’s okay because it hasn’t really rained that much this year (yay climate change), so it’s hot but bearable. It’s 31°C with “only” 45% right now.
We will get 37°C the next days, so I might change my stance.
Are y’all ok over there?
No, not really, with humidity and no aircon anything over the high 90s starts to get pretty unpleasant, especially when it goes on for days and doesn’t cool down properly at night, so you can’t cool your house down.
Cooling down at night is actually a really big deal, plants and animals both use the chill night to rest from the heat. When the night stays hot then the heat really does a lot more damage to health.
At this temperature, emergency medical departments are guaranteed to be full. Weeks later, an uptick in mortality is registered on stats, without exception.
El Granado, Spain humidity is at 34% at this temp, so it could be much worse.
Here’s to drinking lots of H2O. At least it’s a dry heat. I lose my shit in high humid heat.
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But wouldn’t flying to Mallorca be going towards the heat (from most of Europe)?
Could we build a huge glas dome around a city, with adjustable mirrored / polarised surfaces to block out the heat using electricity to alter the properties of the glass?
No, we literally cannot safely build a glass dome that big. I do think large blimps with reflective tops could cool a city a little though.
It’s possible to protect against heatwaves on a city level. Increase the albedo value of the city by doing the following: Incentivize lighter colored roofing and walls, grow leafy trees for shade, cover parking lots with solar roofing (and add EV chargers). Basically do whatever possible to reduce the amount of asphalt and darkish materials in general, being hit by sunshine.
No it won’t save your ass when ambient temperature is 50C, but considering that cities are by their very nature hotter than the ambient temperature out side of the city, these things would help reduce that gap.
Trees are good and general greenery too, but then you run into water issues which will be the limiting factor for a lot of stuff going forward as fresh water availability decreases and groundwater runs low.
Yeah, hoping we can avoid that, but it’s not looking too great. It’s a mitigation for today’s world, but not for the future unless we also manage to solve the water issue. And just global warming in general.
The Spanish roulette is not having a siesta.
That’s 115° in human units. Absolutely bonkers.
We have to put up with US-defaultism even in world@lemmy.world
Would it kill you to not jokingly deny the humanity of every person outside the United States, Liberia, and the Cayman Islands? Just say Fahrenheit. Jeez, yank.
Damn this got more downvotes than supporting Israel
46 degrees is just a fine chilly day!
::laughs in Fahrenheit::
::Laughs at fahrenheit::
heatwave
