It has been a week of record-breaking heat around the world. The average global temperature on Wednesday hit 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit, matching the record-high set just on Tuesday. The grim milestones are the latest in a series of climate change driven extremes. Amna Nawaz discussed these events and what to take from them with Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University.Mike Flannigan described how climate change has contributed to the record Canadian wildfire season, which has affected tens of millions of North Americans, including me. During May and June, smoke from those wildfires has twice blown south into the eastern half of the U.S. and created unhealthy to hazardous air quality from Chicago to New York, with Detroit in-between. Last week, the smoke was thick enough that it matched the worst-looking air pollution I ever saw growing up in Los Angeles. I have never seen air quality this bad in the 34 years I've lived here. My students even asked me why it was happening. Unfortunately, they were my geology students. If my environmental science students had asked, I'd have used the smoke as an example of three of Commoner's Laws, everything is connected to everything else, everything must go somewhere, so there is no "away," and there is no free lunch. If the smoke returns, I might still.
Flannigan also responded to Amna Nawaz's question about whether the increase in temperatures was part of a natural cycle by pointing out that the Earth should be cooling, not warming. That's the same answer I gave in PBS Digital's Be Smart debunks 'The Biggest Myth About Climate Change'.
I have mentioned several times that I'm a paleontologist who studies Pleistocene fossils, particularly snails. What I don't mention is that I used data from the snails, clams, and plants of Rancho La Brea to reconstruct the late Pleistocene climate of southern California, so I'm quite familiar with natural climate change. That's why I was able to respond intelligently to Ed, the troll who was better than a spammer, when he snarked "Maybe you can tell us what the climate is supposed to be so we will know if it's changing too much."Speaking of higher temperatures, PBS NewsHour uploaded July 3, 4 and 5, 2023 set Earth’s hottest records to its YouTube channel.Ed, actually, I can. The average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere should be almost two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it is today based on the pre-1900 temperature trend, three degrees based on the progress of previous interglacials. If you want the reasoning and evidence, you will have to wait until I put together an entire entry with links; it will take more effort than a simple comment is worth. In the meantime, count your blessings that you stumbled onto someone who actually knows the answer to what you may have thought was a rhetorical question too hard to answer.
I'm repeating four facts the presenter shared. First, this week's records broke the one set in 2016, tied for the hottest year on record, which suggests that 2023 is on track to be the hottest year ever — so far. Second, she repeated that this is likely to be the hottest days in 125,000 years. Third, she listed the three reasons for the records, climate change, El Niño, and summer in the Northern Hemisphere; there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere and land heats up more than water. Finally, she mentioned a high temperature record in the Antarctic, which We Are Iowa Local 5 (WOI-TV) included in the description of Thursday was the hottest day on Earth, a record broken for the third time this week.
The warm weather even stretched to Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.That's four record average global high temperatures in a row. There's a reason why I wrote "and it's only Thursday" in the title of yesterday's post.
No comments:
Post a Comment