[HN Gopher] Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degre...
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Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal
Author : elsewhen
Score : 195 points
Date : 2022-03-19 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| georgia_peach wrote:
| bruce343434 wrote:
| So what will be the consequences of this? Article makes it clear
| this is not normal, but doesn't really say much else.
| ben_w wrote:
| The equivalent sea level rise numbers here are larger than I
| was expecting, but if temperatures are regularly above melting
| (are they? IDK from the article), one should expect something
| like this: https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-
| climate/what-...
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Nothing long term, it will most likely swing back the other way
| in a decade or two just like it has done for all of recorded
| history, oscillating back and forth like a global thermal tide.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| For that to be true, it either should have swung back
| already, or at least it needs to do so very VERY soon.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| pil0u wrote:
| I'd argue that such event _is_ the consequences.
| ianai wrote:
| And melting all that ice would have drastic effects on the
| oceans. Current changes, sea level rises, etc. we probably
| can only estimate at the lower range of consequences.
| toss1 wrote:
| If it is just some kind of random anomaly, like a rogue wave,
| not much beyond an odd layer in the glacial ice pack.
|
| The problem is that this is most definitely not an anomaly, but
| a point in a trend of massive climate change. There are many
| predictions of the consequences, and as far as I can tell, the
| actual data are running ahead of the most serious predictions.
| Seems like just another data point.
|
| Also to consider is the multiplier effects of higher
| temperatures at high latitudes, which is already starting to
| release gigatons of methane stored in the permafrost, and
| methane has about 22X the warming effect of carbon dioxide. Not
| the kind of feedback loop we want to allow to run away.
| elif wrote:
| Accelerated calving, meltwater flows, unsafe ice conditions for
| researchers would be some of the immediate consequences, in
| addition to the obvious long-term atmospheric and oceanic
| implications resulting from ice volume loss.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's still below freezing. It's just supposed to be way
| colder than that.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Under the hood Antarctica is way hotter way closer to the
| surface than you might expect. There are volcanoes, too.
|
| We probably want the weather to stay much colder than the
| negative one degree Celsius technically required for it to
| not melt straight away. Could make a critical difference or
| at least soften the impact.
| traeregan wrote:
| > Under the hood Antarctica is way hotter way closer to
| the surface than you might expect. There are volcanoes,
| too.
|
| Thanks, I had no idea.
|
| I found this related article interesting:
| http://www.plateclimatology.com/geological-hotspot-
| melting-p...
| drewmol wrote:
| Isn't it more like < -2 Celcius ambient temperature,
| since it's sea water?
| hh3k0 wrote:
| And it is winter in Antarctica, a mild winter can make
| the impact of summer worse.
| digisign wrote:
| It is summer and ending in a few days.
| tejohnso wrote:
| One of the major concerns, alluded to in the article, is the
| destabilization of the Thwaites. If that thing goes, we're
| done.
| kadoban wrote:
| Nobody really knows, and it's too late to do anything real
| about it. Fun times.
| einpoklum wrote:
| It is too late to do something about what happens _today_, it
| is not too late to do something about what is now likely to
| happen in a decade, and two, and three.
|
| Your comment sounds like on of the stages of the "four stage
| strategy" from Yes Minister:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
|
| originally about why the UK doesn't help foreign nations in
| an inconvenient crisis.
| kadoban wrote:
| > [...] a decade, and two, and three.
|
| My understanding is that very little of what we do now
| would have any effect on what happens in a decade. Maybe in
| three.
| yissp wrote:
| Amazing, I would totally have assumed that clip was
| referring to climate change without any other context.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Most of the great scenes from Yes Minister, and latterly
| Yes Prime Minister, still not only stand up today, but
| are also surprisingly still relevant 40 years after they
| were first broadcast.
|
| It truly was a genius show.
| pil0u wrote:
| That is wrong on many levels. Such nihilist position does not
| help the millions of people leading concrete actions on
| different scales.
|
| You are wrong, it's not too late to change how we behave
| regarding climate and such way of thinking is unlikely to
| induce the required actions.
| kadoban wrote:
| It's too late for what's happening now, that's for sure.
| Stopping the "surprises" that are going to happen in a few
| decades are still likely physically possible. We'll see if
| humanity is up to it.
| lanstin wrote:
| Things will continue to get worse until we do. I guess
| until some hypothetical dystopian society finishes
| burning all he coal. Or someone whose entire family has
| died due to heat/drought engineers a nuclear/biological
| disaster to end the pieces of civilization that use a lot
| of energy. Or you know we de-carbonize and build an
| electrical (for energy) and biological (for medicines and
| food) society.
| kadoban wrote:
| It's not a nihilist position.
|
| It's: "we already fucked up, can we _please_ stop making
| these awful gambles before we're inevitably all dead?"
| formvoltron wrote:
| I was told that I could use my SUV up until the problems
| start, and then I could just start taking the bus to solve
| it.
| Findecanor wrote:
| Climate change is not boolean. It is not a question of damage
| or not damage.
|
| It is a question of _how_ _much_ damage.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Okay, but the frightening part is that this is only true to
| a point.
|
| And that point is where positive feedback loops dominate at
| which point it is very much boolean, habitable by humans or
| not.
|
| But we do not know where that threshold is.
|
| And we may have already passed it.
|
| We just pretend there isn't a real threshold because
| scientists can't tell us exactly where it is yet so we
| might as well just keep doing what we've been doing for
| another 20 years... like we've been using as an excuse for
| the last 40.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I don't think there is any sort of scientific consensus
| that i) there is a point where its too warm for earth to
| be habitable for humans or ii) there is a massive
| feedback loop threshold.
| kadoban wrote:
| There is certainly a point past which the Earth cannot
| support the same order of magnitude of humans, at similar
| technology levels.
|
| It's hard to argue that there are no bad feedback loops
| once temperature gets higher. We know of several huge
| methane stores that are temperature dependent, we know
| how ice and clouds work as temperature rises, etc. We're
| gambling 90-100% of humanity on the critical points not
| being reachable.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I have this mental image of the scene from Erik The
| Viking where the island is sinking into the sea, but
| everyone on the island is denying anything is happening.
|
| It's heartbreaking. We had everything and we pissed it
| away.
| neltnerb wrote:
| And continue to worry about scientific consensus as if
| the mechanisms for piles of known positive feedback
| mechanisms aren't numerous and straightforward. The
| comment a few up is textbook 90s fossil fuel company
| except having ceded ground on the trivial, trivial
| reality that climate change exists at all.
|
| Because there's certainly *not* scientific consensus that
| there are negative (technical sense) feedback loops that
| continue to stabilize the climate (well enough) far away
| from the steady state climate and a lot of good reason to
| think that they will fail to keep up.
| justanother wrote:
| The Elder Things will awaken and humanity will have to choose a
| side between the Elders and the Shoggoths.
| netsharc wrote:
| Hah, that article is a mess of temperature standards as well as
| mixing up delta Fahrenheit to delta Celsius vs Fahrenheit to
| Celsius equivalents (delta 18 F is delta 10 C, whereas the
| temperature 18 F is -7.78 C).
|
| It seems they got it all right, better than some other reports
| where they mix up the 2. Imagine seeing "It's 18 degrees warmer
| in Fahrenheit, (that's -7.78 degrees warmer in Celcius)."
| mark-r wrote:
| The funny thing is that converting _changes_ in temperature is
| even _easier_ than converting actual temperature. There 's no
| offset to apply, which has the nice side effect that the signs
| are never different.
| tormock wrote:
| For 3 days
| jmkni wrote:
| 70 degrees fahrenheit to be clear! Still a lot, wish they
| included that in the headline.
| Proven wrote:
| randcraw wrote:
| "Eastern Antarctica". East of what? I have no idea where that is.
| cpfohl wrote:
| At least it didn't say "northern"...then I'd have been even
| more confused
| mistrial9 wrote:
| draw an imaginary line from right around London, UK to the
| South Pole... imagine standing on that line, looking towards
| London from the sunny shores of the world's oldest forests
| under that ice, East is on your right side.. optional singing
| of national songs or worship according to your conscience
| [deleted]
| dwaltrip wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Antarctica
| digisign wrote:
| Yes, the side facing Asia, rather than the side facing
| America. AKA the round side, not the peninsula side.
| lixtra wrote:
| > This event is completely unprecedented and upended our
| expectations about the Antarctic climate system
|
| While this is more about weather than climate it shows how much
| is still left to be understood.
| sublimefire wrote:
| I found it a bit clickbaity. The title is correct to the letter
| but not really to the spirit, because down at the bottom there
| is:
|
| > Temperatures are known to vary wildly over Antarctica, and
| massive swings are common. Contrasting with this warm spell
| over eastern Antarctica, the South Pole observed just observed
| its coldest April to September period on record last year, with
| an average temperature of minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius).
|
| But to be sure "The heat dome was exceptionally intense, five
| standard deviations above normal" is nuts.
|
| We should rename Antarctica to something like "Crazy
| continent".
| ianai wrote:
| Uhh last I checked 5 standard deviations was the definition
| of a statistically significant difference.
|
| To me it sounds like a realization that climate changes will
| have drastic and possibly chaotic effects.
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| Do you know the temperature probability distribution in
| Antartica? Not all distributions are normal and not all
| even have a standard deviation.
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| Standard deviation is defined by the distribution under
| question.
| FabHK wrote:
| The probability that an observation is beyond 5 standard
| deviations is < 1/25 = 4%, according to Chebyshev's
| inequality, provided the variance of the distribution is
| finite (which, as you say, is not guaranteed, eg. for
| Cauchy distributed random variables).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev's_inequality
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_distribution
| zmgsabst wrote:
| 4% would imply that we should expect about two weeks of
| such weather every year, in total.
|
| Which would make this article somewhat clickbait --
| nothing more than "wowza, July 15th is another hot one in
| California!"
|
| Since it's currently summer, in the Southern Hemisphere.
| cma wrote:
| That's a bound not an expectation.
| tomrod wrote:
| An observation bound below by 5 standard deviations is at
| best a one in a million on a standard normal
| distribution.
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| If the observed variable is "the mean temperature in a
| given day", 4% can be expected to occur relatively
| frequently.
|
| Anyway until we know the probability distribution, and my
| intuition says that it's definitely not Normal for wide
| periods of time, we can't say if it's significant or not.
| ianai wrote:
| You're the only one introducing the normal distribution
| here.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| When discussing standard deviations, what meaning is
| there for non-normal distribution?
|
| https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/108578/what-
| does-s...
| lanstin wrote:
| Five standard deviations is not four percent, it is in
| the 1 in 3 Million range.
| yodon wrote:
| When you start calling five sigma events "click-baity" you
| may find others asking legitimate questions about your
| ability to assess what is significant.
|
| Encountering a headline that tries to get people to read the
| article is a roughly zero-sigma event. That's the purpose of
| a headline, and has been for about 150 years. Retailers also
| sell things for more than they paid for them and supply
| chains are hard. If you can understand what a five sigma
| event is, you can understand these things as well.
| tlokas wrote:
| I must agree on the "click-baity" title.
|
| If it wasn't for the article being posted on HN, I would
| never have clicked on the title, as it includes something
| like "Scientists are flabbergasted".
| teawrecks wrote:
| I think you're hearing "massive swings" and jumping to the
| conclusion that 5 std dev is somehow normal-ish behavior for
| the region. It's not. At all. By definition.
| thesz wrote:
| Temperature is bounded to a positive values and it is
| sufficiently reasonable to at least try to look at
| temperature distribution as a log-normal distribution,
| where logarithms of temperature are distributed normally.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution
|
| From this vantage point, bigger positive swings are more
| likely than bigger negative ones - because positive swings
| are in the range exp(logmean)..infinity and negative ones
| are in range 0..exp(logmean).
|
| Take a look at second picture in Wiipedia article. The
| value with CDF(x)=0.75 is about four times bigger for
| sigma=1 curve than value for CDF(x)=0.25.
|
| And I guess that distribution of temperature in Antarctica
| is more close to a log-normal distribution than
| distribution of temperature in, say, Houston or Cancun.
| mattcwilson wrote:
| That's absolutely right.
|
| But as the article itself says, we don't know if this is
| the start of some trend or if this is a never previously
| observed fluke.
|
| Climate change is about regression to a mean that is itself
| higher than the previous mean. But with or without human
| contribution, weather events are still going to regress to
| a mean.
| bbarnett wrote:
| We at least have day-to-day written history for thousands
| of years, in human population zones. We have oral beyond
| that.
|
| We barely have 30 or 40 for a place like antartica.
|
| We can detect gross climate, and not any real weather in
| fossils.
|
| For example, no fossil record would capture a chinook, a
| common occurance in Alberta.
|
| https://cwf.ca/research/publications/five-facts-about-
| chinoo...
|
| _In 1962, Pincher Creek saw record temperature rise of
| 41 degC from -19 to 22 degC in just an hour._
|
| One hour!
|
| And of course, we have only been monitoring chinooks with
| detail for maybe a 150 years.
| earleybird wrote:
| It is however fairly predicable that folks will comment
| on unusual (to them) weather behaviour[0]. First thought
| - "I guess Leo has never experienced a chinook". Go to
| school when it's -25degC; go home for lunch at +5degC
| [1].
|
| [0]
| https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/celebrity/that-
| awkwa...
|
| [1] circa mid 60s
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| The climate is the weather, on average. It's not wrong to call
| this climate change.
| beeboop wrote:
| The earth is billions of years old. A single week of hot
| temperatures is not indicative of lasting, permanent change
| or even a change in a trend in terms of climate
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| 5 sigma.
| Comevius wrote:
| We are studying the climate for half a century and we have
| information about it that goes back to millions of years.
| We can't wait hundreds of years to draw a conclusion,
| because the climate is changing so rapidly. We have to
| prepare now, and our imperfect models are helpful, even
| though time and time again they turn out to be too
| optimistic.
|
| This atmospheric river and heat dome phenomenon is part of
| the rapid changes that are taking place. You can see these
| significant changes with your own eyes, but they are more
| obvious at the northernmost areas such as Siberia.
| the_alchemist wrote:
| Without paywall on archive.org
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220319112653/https://www.washi...
| [deleted]
| rthomas6 wrote:
| That's 10deg F (-12 C) instead of -60deg F (-51 C), to be clear.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/WHpV1
| herpderperator wrote:
| This site can't provide a secure connection archive.is
| uses an unsupported protocol.
| ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH root@thinkpad:~#
| openssl s_client -showcerts -connect archive.is:443
| CONNECTED(00000003) 140330990556480:error:14094410:SSL
| routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert handshake
| failure:../ssl/record/rec_layer_s3.c:1543:SSL alert number 40
| --- no peer certificate available --- No
| client certificate CA names sent --- SSL handshake
| has read 7 bytes and written 302 bytes Verification: OK
| --- New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE) Secure
| Renegotiation IS NOT supported Compression: NONE
| Expansion: NONE No ALPN negotiated Early data was
| not sent Verify return code: 0 (ok) ---
| ev1 wrote:
| They are intentionally blocking you.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| The site is fine. Cloudflare's DNS is blocked by it, use
| another provider. For more context:
| https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-today-does-not-
| re...
| posix_compliant wrote:
| This is the craziest/coolest denial of service I've seen in
| a while. Intentionally poisoning your own DNS record is
| next level.
| leereeves wrote:
| The reason for it may be less appealing. According to
| Cloudflare[1]:
|
| > The archive.is owner has explained that he returns bad
| results to us because we don't pass along the EDNS subnet
| information. This information leaks information about a
| requester's IP and, in turn, sacrifices the privacy of
| users.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
| singularity2001 wrote:
| that is 39 Celsius above minimum average, or 27 Celsius on the
| conservative side:
|
| Instead of temperatures being minus-50 or minus-60 degrees
| (minus-45 or minus-51 Celsius), they've been closer to zero or 10
| degrees (minus-18 Celsius or minus-12 Celsius)
| toxik wrote:
| Without knowing the variance, that really says nothing.
| lamontcg wrote:
| "five standard deviations above normal." -- from the article
| toxik wrote:
| Calculated conditioned on calendar day or just treating it
| as one time series?
| tejohnso wrote:
| Here's what it says according to various researchers, per the
| article:
|
| "This event is completely unprecedented and upended our
| expectations about the Antarctic climate system"
|
| "Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,"
|
| "Concordia -18.0 degC unthinkable value in mid-March "
|
| And then for something less extreme:
|
| "[W]e can't tell whether this is going to be a new trend or
| is just an oddity that occurs occasionally on a most
| fascinating continent,"
|
| Personally, I think it's important to pay attention when
| experts in the field say things like unprecedented and
| unthinkable on the record. Especially given scientists have a
| tendency to be more conservative. I think it's a pretty
| shallow dismissal to say that it really says nothing when
| experts are saying the opposite.
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(page generated 2022-03-19 23:01 UTC)