Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 August 7
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August 7 edit
Climate change temperatures - 2022 edit
Are the temperatures in Ireland, the UK and the USA (or other countries) rising due to climate change? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 21:17, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
- A more accurate way to look at it is that temperatures are rising due to the human generated increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These temperature rises are causing climate change. HiLo48 (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
- Climate is the weather averaged over 30 years, so if temperatures are rising, climate must get hotter and if the climate gets hotter, it's likely that high temperatures get more commen. The correlation works both ways, although the definition goes from weather to climate. And yes, these heat waves that are getting common now and were pretty much unheard of just 25 years ago have everything to do with human greenhouse gas emissions. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:11, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
- This article from the UK Met Office, A milestone in UK climate history, has this quote from Professor Stephen Belcher, the Met Office Chief Scientist:
- "In a climate unaffected by human influence, climate modelling shows that it is virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40°C. Under a very high emissions scenario we could see temperatures exceeding 40 degrees as frequently as every three years by the end of the century in the UK. Reducing carbon emissions will help to reduce the frequency, but we will still continue to see some occurrences of temperatures exceeding 40°C and the UK will need to adapt to these extreme events".
- Alansplodge (talk) 13:58, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Is this happening in the whole of Ireland (including the north), Britain and the United States? 86.140.120.168 (talk) 22:21, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
- Yes. This is a "concurrent heat wave" which, as with heat waves in general, have also increased dramatically in frequency in recent decades. W. E. Forum has a decent writeup on all this. The EPA also has nice charts (of U.S. data at least). In terms of the relation of climate change to the rise in heat waves, here's one MIT blog piece.
- The takeaway is this: human activity from the 19th century to today has caused significant climate change which has resulted in global average temperatures increasing over the past half century. This does not mean that the high heat you are feeling today is directly caused by CO2 emissions from a given time, or from any human activity in general. Rather, human activity has increased, and continues to increase, the likelihood and intensity of high heat events occurring in general (among other weather events). SamuelRiv (talk) 22:58, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
- Yes. There are a few places where, thanks to changing wind patterns, the climate is getting colder, but in most of the world it's getting hotter and there's no doubt about the cause. As for any heatwave you may be experiencing right now, that's a random fluctuation of the weather. The distribution of those random fluctuations is changing rapidly; that distribution is what we call climate.
- Today, it won't be exceptionally warm where I am (the southeast of the Netherlands); around 30°C. Around 25 years ago, I experienced temperatures at least that hot on average 7 days per year. My thermometer hasn't moved since and this side of the city hasn't really changed, but now I have such temperatures on about 22 days per year. There are about 7 days per year now that it gets to 35°C, which used to be one day per 3 years. Now we get 40°C once per 3 years. The average temperature increased with 1.2°C, but the extremes more. At the same time, winter got 25% wetter and summer 25% dryer and the number of days with frost dropped from 40 per year to 25. It's actually quite spectacular, but also worrying. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Well, I think that's good news for me. Because I like it when the weather is warm (well, at least a little). 86.140.120.168 (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
- Most people don't think it's good news. You may get more than you bargained for. What about the tropical mosquitoes also liking the warmer weather, spreading nasty tropical diseases in the UK? Or the occasional flooding washing houses away, summer droughts turning your back garden into dust and the smoke from burning, desiccated peat? It appears to me that the only part of the world that actually benefits from this climate change is the Sahel, which is getting wetter. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:01, 10 August 2022 (UTC)