World Weather Attribution, a group that does rapid estimates of weather events, has calculated the odds that our current heat wave would have happened with and without climate change. Their final synthesis is the purple bar at the bottom. For the southwestern US, climate change has made the heat wave 3,000-11,000 times more likely, with a middle estimate of 10,000 times:
Yeah, it's the climate, stupid.
It doesn't matter.
Why not?
Justin is a troll whose game is nihilistic enervation.
He means ppl won't change; they'll just regret their choices shortly before they die. See: COVID.
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Trying to load the link but it seems to be having issues. I assume it has verbiage explaining how what I assume all the 12 or 14 or so other estimates and their ranges get combined into "synthesis?"
“…[heatwaves like currently experienced] in North America, Europe and China are [now] expected approximately once every 15 years in the US/Mexico region, once every 10 years in Southern Europe, and once in 5 years for China…”
If humans had *never* burned fossil fuels and warmed the planet (dunno if that includes more traditional releases of CO2 like slash and burn agriculture)… then:
“…these heat events would have been extremely rare. In China it would have been a 1 in 250 year event while maximum heat like in July 2023 would have been virtually impossible to occur in the US/Mexico region and Southern Europe if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels…”
So China’s heat wave went from 1 in 250 year event to 1 in 5 year event. And the maximum temps in US/Mexico would likely have been impossible to produce without our added CO2. (I guess that *impossible* is where the “10,000 times more likely” phrase comes from?
Sounds plausible to a know-nothing like me. Barring a Pinatubo, a Krakatoa and a St Helen’s every year for a decade!
And that's why people propose putting sulfates into the stratosphere.
Alas, we really have to be "all of the above" now when dealing with global warming.
This seems to be getting into a problem that I have commented on before: how do we estimate the probability of rare events whose time-scale is considerably less than a year? We have historical records on the daily scale, which are obviously fairly restricted in time and get less precise as we go back. We also have various types of paleotemperature records such as tree rings, but as far as I know these are annual. Thus to rank events of less than a year - that is which don't affect the yearly record strongly - seems to require a lot of extrapolation from fairly recent records, using time distributions which are unknown. The piece evidently is working with at least 100000 year events, or it could not get a difference of 10000 in probability. They seem to be comparing two small probabilities obtained from considerable exponential extrapolation. I doubt if the numerical estimates are really reliable, even to the order of magnitude.
Just because a calculation can be made doesn't mean that the result is meaningful. If we just say that current heat waves are historically unprecedented we might be saying about all that we really know.
Annual average temperatures - which keep rising - are a different thing. We do have paleo records from ice cores and other measurements.
Specific attributions are tricky at best, and should be taken with a grain of salt..but...
Calling out a given weather event as "climate change" is nearly as silly as saying a snow storm means there is no global warming. Saying an overall change in weather events fits expected climate change models is more appropriate. However, climate deniers latch onto that--"look, they didn't say "X" was caused by global warming, so global warming isn't real." The attribution calculations are meant to counter that.
These types of estimates are not based on purely statistical analysis of observed records. They are also informed by knowledge of physics and atmospheric dynamics.
As well, even limiting yourself to observations only you don't need 10,000 years of data to estimate a 1/10,000 year event. If you have enough data to derive a bell curve with high enough confidence you can describe the long tails at each end.
Real thermometers and temperature scales were apparently not invented until the 16th-17th centuries, so we could not have good characterization of events in much over the over 100-year probability range.
"When scientists focus on climate from before the past 100-150 years, they use records from physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved within the geologic record. Organisms (such as diatoms, forams, and coral) can serve as useful climate proxies. Other proxies include ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores. Chemical proxy records include isotope ratios, elemental analyses, biomarkers, and biogenic silica. Taken together, these proxies extend our knowledge of past climate back hundreds of millions of years into the past." -- NASA
All the things mentioned give annual or seasonal mean temperature records, as far as I know, not daily records (as I said above). This post is concerned with individual weather events on the time-scale of weeks.
I went down that path the other day. Got a similar reaction.
Skept
I agree with the thought process
But the story line is climate change which takes centuries to happen has made heat wave MORE LIKELY to occur
Drum was very coy with this headline
I think the easier thing to prove is the affect global warming is having. Broadly stated? Oh yeah.
But a North American current shutdown by 2025 to 2050 is a serious prediction to make. Ice melt would increase exponentially, leaving vast swaths of coastal properties untenable (including mine(
Despite having no historical daily temperature records from the days of pyramid building, I can still say with pretty near 100% certainty that they never had a day with a high of 70oC, can't I?
If one can admit to this, then we can start a discussion of just how much we can constrain our estimations of what the Egyptians did in fact experience. You have not defined what qualifies as a "good characterization" so I have no idea if we can get there or not.
I definitely applaud a healthy dose of skepticism, but I think it is pretty foolish to assume that the climate science community is not full of that themselves. They have thought it through very carefully and contentiously (and publicly).
We really must face the reality: the climate is changing in all the ways they have been predicting, plus a few alarming surprises.
Real time ocean currents and their temperature,
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2023/04/05/1400Z/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=236.80,-1.57,417/loc=-17.886,13.147
But what am I looking at here? Is it temperature variance from an historical average? I copied this link from somewhere a while ago and then lost the explanation.
I want to reiterate that China announced it is targeting 2030 for peak CO2, and won't hit net-zero until 2060. Until 2030, it will keep adding coal power plants.
Just saying, people are not alarmed enough and willing to do something right now, and by the time thousands of people die from every climate change driven event, it'll be half a century before those changes will reduce temperatures.
Also, there's this.
They're not talking next mid-century; they're referring to this mid-century period.
Remember, even if you magically hit net-zero today, there's a lag on effects. It will take several years before atmospheric CO2 starts to decline, and it'll take centuries, absent artificial means of CO2 reduction, before CO2 would naturally go down. It'll take decades before temperatures reach peak then start to go down.
Mitigation, folks. Move away from Florida.
If we hit NET zero, atmospheric CO2 does not decline; it just stops increasing. That's why I keep saying that net zero is an interim goal; the longer term goal must be net negative, and the longer term should not be too long.
So, second sound-the-alarm post from you in the last twenty-four hours Kevin. Begging the question: besides calling for others to discover a silver bullet, have you undertaken any concrete steps yourself?
Pretty textbook ad hominem response here. And what is it meant to say anyway? If Kevin is not proposing any solutions then there must not be a real problem? If Kevin is not proposing any solutions then nothing can be done? or he must not be sincere?
I am sincerely curious.
I'm accusing him of either hypocrisy or "Not In My Lifestyle" What you may not know is that in the last few years, Kevin has told us about his kitchen remodel wherein he kept or went with gas and replaced his car with just another ICE vehicle. At least two places where he could have put the proverbial money where the mouth is, and didn't.
Yeah, I got that. That is called "ad hominem". It (supposedly) says something about Kevin, but what does it say about how this (no longer) unprecedented heatwave is a clear consequence of anthropogenic climate change?
Nothing. It is a classic diversion. If you yourself are taking heroic personal actions towards mitigating our coming catastrophes, then I understand being frustrated with a fellow concerned individual for complaining but not doing their part. If you are not, then it is just a cynical distraction.
Not to mention the scale of change necessary means individual action is next to meaningless. I know that's verging on nihilism, but one consumer can't change the economy. It takes millions, and most people don't have the economic ability to make climate-driven choices.