[HN Gopher] Monday was hottest day for global average temperatur...
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Monday was hottest day for global average temperature, as climate
crisis bites
Author : rntn
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-07-04 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nzach wrote:
| How does someone measure the average global temperature? And what
| does it means?
|
| The Wikipedia[0] has one interesting source[1] but what they show
| there isn't an average.
|
| My guess would be that somehow satellites can measure the surface
| temperature and use that to make an average?
|
| I would be very happy if someone could some point me to some
| explanations about this process.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surface_temperature
|
| [1] - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-
| report/g...
| amelius wrote:
| Next I want to learn how they measure Earth's entropy.
| wrycoder wrote:
| There are two sets of satellites that measure the temperature
| of the global troposphere, and have been doing so for over
| forty years. The data from one of them, UAH, is analyzed
| here.[0] It is increasing at 0.13C per decade, averaged over 44
| years.
|
| [0] https://www.drroyspencer.com/2023/06/uah-global-
| temperature-...
| xvedejas wrote:
| Earth-observing satellites can measure surface temperature with
| so-called "thermal infrared" bands. I am unsure on the exact
| process typically used to go from that map to a global average,
| but that's a likely starting point.
| akiselev wrote:
| There are tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of land based
| weather stations, bouys and floats, weather balloons,
| radiosondes, observatories, and satellites around the world
| that form a lot of different sensor networks like Argo, ASOS,
| AWOS, etc. operated by a bunch of government agencies around
| the world. The World Meteorological Organization at the UN
| coordinates the sharing of all this data and there are too many
| players to list but the most important global datasets produced
| by the US are the GHCN v4 for land and ERSST v5 for sea.
|
| Each organization creates their own models and often compare
| with each other but most methods start by defining a grid that
| divides the planet, then use a model to estimate the average
| temperature for each cell given available sensor data. Many
| cells, especially in the middle of the ocean, don't have any
| direct measurements so have to be filled in using satellite
| based estimates or kriging (interpolation). They average over
| all of the grid cells in each hemisphere separately then apply
| some sort of formula to account for the fact that the northern
| hemisphere has significantly better coverage.
|
| It's not the most precise calculation and what most people are
| looking for is the rate of change over time using the same
| model and dataset (which are also versioned based on changes in
| methodology).
| fdsajkfdskl wrote:
| [flagged]
| akiselev wrote:
| It's literally in the first paragraph of TFA:
|
| _> This Monday, 3 July 2023, was the hottest day ever
| recorded globally, according to data from the US National
| Centers for Environmental Prediction._
|
| Key phrase: "ever recorded globally"
|
| It's obviously not the hottest day _ever_ because four and
| a half billion years ago during the Hadean [1] the surface
| temperature of the earth would have been hundreds of
| degrees centigrade.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean
| rfdsaljfds wrote:
| Sounds like we don't have much to worry about, then.
| akiselev wrote:
| Of course not. The Hadean was a tropical paradise known
| for its diversity of life. That's why it was named after
| the Greek god of fertility (Poe's law applies).
| comfypotato wrote:
| Climate science has always acknowledged this. The rate of
| rise is unprecedented. This is based on non-man-made
| evidence we gather from the world around us. Concentration
| of pollen in layers of ice cores for example.
| fdsajkfdskl wrote:
| >Climate science has always acknowledged this.
|
| Then who are these kind of headlines (ie, "Hottest day
| ever!") for? Given they are factually incorrect, they are
| clearly emotionally-lead garbage for the masses.
|
| >The rate of rise is unprecedented. Concentration of
| pollen in layers of ice cores for example.
|
| Would love to see a source for that.
| slater wrote:
| > Then who are these kind of headlines (ie, "Hottest day
| ever!") for? Given they are factually incorrect
|
| how so?
| fdsajkfdskl wrote:
| It is not the hottest day ever.
| slater wrote:
| i mean, yeah, back when the earth was formed i'm sure it
| was VERY much hotter than it has been in recent millennia
|
| (are you attempting a "global warming isn't real and/or
| not human-induced and/or 'just part of the regular cycle
| of things'"...?)
| wizofaus wrote:
| The headline doesn't say "ever", it says "on record".
| That's widely understood to mean "since accurate
| temperature records began", and doesn't include the fact
| that the earth was known to be far warmer in former aeons
| (we certainly don't have any records of what the average
| temperature was on any given day then).
| fdsajkfdskl wrote:
| >The headline doesn't say "ever", it says "on record".
|
| HN's editorialised version does not say that.
|
| >That's widely understood to mean "since accurate
| temperature records began"
|
| You have a much more charitable view of the average
| newspaper skimmer's understanding of scientific nuance
| than I do.
|
| >doesn't include the fact that the earth was known to be
| far warmer in former aeons
|
| So the problem is?
| wizofaus wrote:
| > HN's editorialised version does not say that.
|
| True, "on record" was elided, but nor does it say "ever".
| And given the readership of HN I doubt it was done for
| sensationalist purposes, purely space-saving.
|
| > So the problem is?
|
| None, that I can see - it was you that claimed the
| headline was "factually incorrect".
| comfypotato wrote:
| For me, in the context of the climate change discussion,
| I knew exactly what it was trying to communicate. I did
| not find it particularly sensationalized.
|
| > Would love to see a source for that.
|
| False. If you'd love to you would have at least given it
| a quick Google and found plenty of relevant papers.
|
| There are thousands of studies that would communicate
| what I just said with a basic Google Scholar search.
|
| If you're a climate change denier just say that so we can
| move on with our lives.
| rfdsaljfds wrote:
| >For me, in the context of the climate change discussion,
| I knew exactly what it was trying to communicate.
|
| Yep. Emotionally-lead garbage, designed to appeal to the
| believers and the masses.
|
| >False. If you'd love to you would have at least given it
| a quick Google and found plenty of relevant papers.
|
| I did. I found plenty of resources, but none of them
| talked about the _rate of change_.
|
| >If you're a climate change denier just say that so we
| can move on with our lives.
|
| I'll take "climate change" as a proxy for "our current
| state of human inhabitation of our planet is
| unsustainable".
| comfypotato wrote:
| Your tone is out of line with HN guidelines.
|
| Emotionally laden, sure. But it's not garbage.
|
| Our inhabitation is sustainable in part because of
| sensational climate science. It plays an important role
| in keeping our effect on the planet in check.
|
| As far as you not finding a source: it doesn't surprise
| me. With your attitude, you'll never find anything. I did
| a quick search as a sanity check and the first hit (just
| Google, not Google Scholar even) had exactly what I would
| send you if this argument was worth my time.
| fdsajkfdskl wrote:
| >Climate science
|
| While I'm here, let us not forget that one of the origins
| for what we now call Chaos Theory came from scientists
| trying to answer questions like "is there such thing as a
| climate?"
| jbotz wrote:
| The same way you take any temperature... by sampling and then
| averaging over the samples. Obviously you need to have enough
| well distributed samples to get a reasonable accuracy, but this
| is all an old hat.
|
| Btw., I suspect you get that "I don't know what average
| temperature even means" from some nonsense Ivar Giaever spouted
| at a presentation that's on YouTube. The simple answer to that
| is that average temperature means the same thing as
| temperature, because temperature is always an average that we
| can only arrive at by sampling (since it represents the average
| kinetic energy of a volume of particles and you can't meassure
| each particle's energy individually). Ivar Giavever knows that,
| but he also knows that people will believe almost anything that
| comes from him because he has a Nobel Price. After all, his
| autobiography is titled "I'm the smartest man I know".
| raybb wrote:
| The source of the data is
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/ according to
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-04/world-rec...
|
| I wonder how a story like this gets picked up.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Quote from that page :
|
| " This page provides time series and map visualizations of
| daily mean 2-meter air temperature from the NCEP Climate
| Forecast System (CFS) version 2 (April 2011 - present) and
| CFS Reanalysis (January 1979 - March 2011). CFS/CFSR is a
| numerical climate/weather modeling framework that ingests
| surface, radiosonde, and satellite observations to estimate
| the state of the atmosphere at hourly time resolution onward
| from 1 January 1979. The horizontal gridcell resolution is
| 0.5degx0.5deg (~ 55km at 45degN). Temperature anomalies are
| in reference to 1979-2000 climatology for each specific day
| of the year."
| LovinFossilFuel wrote:
| [flagged]
| seydor wrote:
| I believe Temperature is now a politicized measure, therefore it
| forever impossible to know it's true value.
| sublinear wrote:
| I agree in the sense that global warming is about the
| temperature of the oceans, not the atmosphere. The oceans are
| essentially a very large thermal battery.
|
| I immediately know the article is trash the moment they start
| blaming global warming for how hot or cold it is today rather
| than broader weather patterns. The upper and lower bounds for
| temperature at a given time of year are far more dependent on
| geography. It's trivially easy to see that all this "record
| breaking" is just recency bias, not global warming.
| geraneum wrote:
| Does it mean that if my thermometer shows 10C it might be lying
| because of its political bias? Or did you miss an "/s" and I
| the sarcasm?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| that is a useful stance for someone who argues for the status
| quo. label anything you don't like "fake news" or "fake
| science" and go on whistling past the graveyard.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| [flagged]
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| > By that logic
|
| Only if you've got a Sean Hannity level of understanding of
| climate change.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| A hot day is purely anecdotal data. It's hype, often
| selecting records that mean nothing.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Abnormal cold days are a sign of climate change too.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Hahah yeah at this point everything is a sign of climate
| change. That's my point. You win either way.
| orwin wrote:
| It bears repeating, the carbon dioxide/methane doesn't have any
| impact on global warming (troposphere warming?) until it reaches
| sufficient height.
|
| It takes 2-3 years for the methane to reach those heights, and
| 20+ for the carbon dioxide. The average increase in temperature
| we have now is caused by 2003's emissions.
|
| Other informations about how all this work (basic, incomplete,
| but better than what I usually hear):
|
| Greenhouse effect doesn't really work like a greenhouse.
| Basically, to be in a balanced system, earth has to re-radiate
| all the energy it gets from the sun. The energy a body radiate
| depends on its temperature (plank's law). Earth need to reach
| 255K (-18 basically) to radiate all it gets from the sun. The
| nitrogen, dioxygen and argon in the atmosphere do not prevent
| that radiation, but water (especially) and Co2 do.
| This basically make that earth cannot radiate the energy it gets
| at ground level (that's the greenhouse effect) and has to radiate
| the energy where the atmosphere is thinner, a few kilometers up,
| where the concentration of both Co2 and h2o is lower
| (concentration here as particle per m3). So the earth has to heat
| all the atmosphere until that altitude (where GHGs do not block
| radiation anymore) reach 255K. So, when the Co2
| concentration above that point rises, the altitude the radiation
| occurs rises too. But that altitude is colder, it cannot radiate
| as much energy as it gets from the sun. So the atmosphere heat up
| a bit, until that new altitude reach 255k.
|
| Obviously it's a lot more complex, with reflection, absorption
| spectrum of molecules... There is also more than one GHG, there
| is stratosphere effect, but this explain way better than 'we live
| in a big greenhouse'.
|
| Does that make sense? First time I do this in writing and in
| English?
|
| I'll take every correction that will not make the explanation too
| hard (unless I'm flatly wrong and lying instead of vulgarising).
| NovaDudely wrote:
| Im don't have enough knowledge to know how accurate that is,
| but if true that is both fascinating and worrying.
|
| I say this simply because I figured warming at any level would
| be an issue but what you say sounds plausible.
|
| I have some reading to do.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Carbon dioxide takes 20+ years to reach the stratosphere? Gases
| with higher molecular weights like halogenated ozone depleting
| substances reach the stratosphere in no more than 5 years:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer...
|
| _Ozone depleting substances that release chlorine include
| chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs),
| carbon tetrachloride, and methyl chloroform. ODS that release
| bromine include halons and methyl bromide. Although ODS are
| emitted at the Earth's surface, they are eventually carried
| into the stratosphere in a process that can take as long as two
| to five years._
|
| I would expect gases with a lower molecular weight to blend
| into the homosphere even faster.
| dbsights wrote:
| About that negative 18 degrees for equilibrium, does that take
| into account the heat radiating from within the earth as well?
| Radioactive decay, the core is quite hot.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Very interesting. Please can you suggest a reference?
| orwin wrote:
| In French (I don't know if the English words I used were
| correct, so I can't search English sources):
|
| Article from a vulgarisation paper: https://www.futura-
| sciences.com/planete/dossiers/climatologi...
|
| And a pdf from my previous university (way drier, lot of math
| and inference, nice graphs though): https://web.lmd.jussieu.f
| r/~jldufres/IUFM_Creteil/Dufresne_b...
| jbotz wrote:
| I can't find a date on either of these, but they look a bit
| dated. The newest reference in the presenetation is from
| 2007 and uses graphs from 2001.
|
| I know that I heard something aout CO2 taking 20 years to
| get to the upper atmosphere around then, too, but not
| since, and I remember being curious about that and
| researching it a bit about a decade ago and finding that
| this is not what most atmospheric scientists believed
| (anymore?).
| orwin wrote:
| I stopped learning physics circa 2011, so I might be
| dated too tbh.
|
| I'll look into it tomorrow.
| wyre wrote:
| The climate denialism on this site is ridiculous, considering the
| average education and pay rates of the users on this site.
| tomohelix wrote:
| You should also consider the field and expertise of the users.
| Also, I am not specialized in data science but even I know that
| at some point, it is just so easy to cook up whatever
| conclusions you want if you have a big enough dataset. So I
| imagine that those who works with data analysis all the time
| eventually get jaded whenever they heard someone demanding
| drastic, even unreasonable, changes based on data they found.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Such records are going to get broken pretty much every year.
| Shouldn't really be "news".
| gmuslera wrote:
| As long as we keep not doing any meaningful to stop those
| records to be broken, is good to be reminded that we are
| getting closer to hit a wall.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Happy Birthday my dude.
| [deleted]
| jlengrand wrote:
| It should be news everywhere each and every day until we do
| enough about it so it isn't any more IMHO
| replygirl wrote:
| the boy who cried wolf is about that
| _Microft wrote:
| You're mistaken there: "The boy who cried wolf" is about
| lying about there being a wolf while it isn't, not about
| speaking the truth but nobody wanting to listen.
|
| Edit: check for yourself if you like:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I didn't think about the inverse parable, but I suppose
| that's Cassandra (and I've heard the database name was
| also a playful jab at Oracle, since Cassandra herself was
| an oracle).
| saulpw wrote:
| Cassandra foresaw the future but nobody listened.
| replygirl wrote:
| i think you misjudged this as a climate denialist
| comment. it's not.
|
| the boy who cried wolf was about someone stirring
| hysteria so much it desensitized people beyond the point
| of caring when the threat was actually existential. it's
| not a perfect analogy but basically we've been crying
| wolf for decades (focusing on the wrong things:
| denuclearization, air quality, ozone layer, full-electric
| cars; vs. energy density, dense land uses, hybrids,
| democratic economies, etc.) and now that the wolf is
| starting to eat us, crying more won't help
| pengaru wrote:
| Climate change is such a slow-moving massive-scale issue
| of course there's going to be decades and decades of
| observational reporting on its myriad effects.
|
| The boy who cried wolf is about telling fibs ruining
| one's credibility, it's entirely different.
|
| Our news sources shouldn't suppress reporting slow-moving
| disasters just because humans have a short attention
| span.
| momdad420 wrote:
| [dead]
| relativeMeans wrote:
| [dead]
| jlengrand wrote:
| I'm half wondering if commenter implies that the wolf
| doesn't exist indeed...
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| The effects of Global Warming should've been featured in
| sciency publications like Times Magazine at least three
| decades ago.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=time+magazine+1990s+globa
| l...
| ars wrote:
| That's a great way to make everyone ignore it. Calling it a
| "crisis" does the same thing, the first time you hear crisis
| you get worried, then you realize it's a very very slow
| moving thing and you start ignoring them.
|
| Being alarmist helps no one.
|
| Just be factual about it, it's not the news media's job to
| rile people up or get them to take some kind of action.
| jlengrand wrote:
| It has been the warmest day in the history since anyone
| starting measuring, and the summer days haven't started
| globally yet is a pretty factual way to put it in my book
| ars wrote:
| I agree. But don't call it "Climate Crisis", that just
| sounds silly, and will make people ignore you (it's also
| not factual since a crisis is something that happens
| quickly). "Global Warming", or "Climate Change" work
| perfectly fine.
| Epa095 wrote:
| It very much is a crisis. Merriam-webster is literally
| using "the environmental crisis" as an example of proper
| use of the word "crisis".
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crisis
| smolder wrote:
| There are mountains of people doing what you do and
| complaining about alarmism and fear mongering and chiding
| people for apocalyptic predictions any time this subject
| comes up. I think that's worse than unhelpful, and is a
| disservice to everyone that lives after us. People are
| sounding the alarms and making dire predictions because
| there is so far 0 indication that as a global society we
| can cooperate well enough to prevent serious and
| irreparable harm to Earth's ecosystems and a great deal of
| consequent human suffering. We just barely, as a species,
| managed to contain ourselves well enough to not blow up in
| a nuclear light show. Peace is a fragile stalemate, not a
| lack of desire to destroy each other. If you ask me,
| there's no hope of an adequate change of inertia to prevent
| unprecedented human suffering stemming from AGW, and that's
| in large part because people would rather ignore it and
| stay comfortable. Toning down the alarmism does nothing to
| fix that.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| So what do you suggest? Be scared everyday of the
| impending doom that awaits us inevitably (or maybe not in
| the end)? Is that a good way to live life?
| Epa095 wrote:
| You can for example figure out how you can help the
| situation? Sticking your head in the sand is probably not
| the most helpful thing you can do. Even if YOU can't stop
| global warming (none of us can alone), you can atleast
| help spread willingness to action by telling the sober
| truth. Not exaggerate, but also not trivialise it.
| superb_dev wrote:
| And this one will be broken again today
| jemmyw wrote:
| Should they stop reporting on it then? Hey maybe when an
| athlete next breaks a speed/distance record they won't report
| on that either.
| radec wrote:
| A lot of things that happen more then once, repeatably and
| predictably are still news.
|
| according to Webster news is just: 1a: a report of recent
| events
|
| source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/news
| paganel wrote:
| [flagged]
| ThisIsNowhere wrote:
| Well the US Supreme Court said last year that any new
| Environmental Protection Agency regulation is invalid on
| creation, so there's that.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It's supposed to be Congress' job to do something, but
| unfortunately they appear to be useless.
| triceratops wrote:
| Open your eyes to the possibility that maybe, just maybe,
| SCOTUS kicked it back to Congress purely because Congress is
| useless and won't do anything.
| flangola7 wrote:
| We have considered that possibility, assessed it, and
| determined that was not the case. Onto the next thing.
| [deleted]
| pookah wrote:
| [dead]
| runarberg wrote:
| Congress has been doing climate and environmental
| regulation since Nixon. However in 1998 the Senate killed
| the Kyoto protocol (even though it was signed by the
| Clinton administration) and in 2001 the Bush administration
| became increasingly hostile towards any climate regulation.
| This supreme court case is simply yet another governing
| body standing in the way of congress to write and maintain
| climate and environmental regulation.
|
| Don't blame this on the congress. Doing so is an
| ahistorical timeline.
| pkulak wrote:
| Well, half are.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Except in this instance, the conservative justices completely
| abandoned their "textualism" argument given the law in
| question _was_ written by Congress to do precisely what they
| disallowed. And no, I don 't want to hear that "well clearly
| not since they ruled against it."
|
| To be clear: I'm talking about their redefinition of the word
| "adjacent". Forgive me if I'm not following the thread
| correctly here. Justice Alito seems to think adjacent means
| "navigable waters" instead of "these waters are literally
| connected to each other even if not above ground".
| twoodfin wrote:
| Almost all waters are "literally connected to each other"
| in a manner that's clearly beyond anything Congress
| intended to regulate when they revised the CWA.
|
| It's just a matter of how intimately connected.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Funny how this claim can be made when they pull shit like
| this but not when they legislate from the bench for the
| right.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If we pretend the Supreme Court is partisan, which it is
| not but let's entertain that thought here, then the
| decision was and bipartisan. Both the Left and the Right
| judged that the EPA was overstepping its authority.[1]
|
| >The court voted unanimously to reverse the Ninth Circuit,
| but split 5-4 on the rationale. The majority opinion, by
| Alito, introduced a new test to define wetlands, which
| reversed five decades of EPA rule-making and limited the
| scope of the Clean Water Act's authority to regulate waters
| of the United States. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the
| three liberal justices in agreeing that the CWA did not
| apply to the Sacketts' property, but argued that the
| majority's new definition was incorrect and will have
| significant effects on regulated waters.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackett_v._Environmental
| _Prote...
| jmclnx wrote:
| >unfortunately they appear to be useless
|
| Being nice aren't we :)
|
| They are useless unless the regulation lines their pockets
| along with it seems the Court System. The US will bring down
| the world with it based upon how the Supreme Court Legalized
| bribing.
|
| I say this as a US citizen.
| jiggyjace wrote:
| I think it's unwise to constantly associate normal temperature
| fluctuations with any threat to civilization. If anything, it
| might be a leading indicator of mass migration. But we shouldn't
| ignore evidence to the contrary, mass influx of population
| towards warm areas, like the Sun Belt. If anything, humanity has
| increased in its capabilities to live in hot temperatures.
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