not saying there’s not a climate change disaster happening, but some of these analyses are a little misleading.
Except that to only say “…since 1979” is to comment in either ignorance or bad faith (your pick). We maintained record breaking temps ALL above the prior record for 36 is the damn point, and to miss that is to miss the entire thing.
There have been 44 years since 1979. Lets say the probability of getting 1 day above the 1979 record in a given year is 1/44 (uniform). The probability of even getting a week of the hottest days in one year would be (1/44)^7, would be a one in 300 billion chance. There are some issues and some assumptions I’m making for convenience, but its not ok to make idle comments with no comprehension of the scale of extremity this event represents.
As in, do you have any fucking idea how unlikely that is? This isn’t an ‘oopsie poopsie’ funny record event.
Not to be too pedantic but your back of the envelope probabilities are based on inaccurate assumptions and probably several orders of magnitude off. Specifically, your not just assuming uniform but also independent from one day to the next. A more accurate treatment would be to assume conditional dependence from one day to the next (the Markov property). Once you have a record hot day, you are significantly more likely to have another record hot day following it.
That said, it’s still low probability, just not as low as what you’re saying.
If we stick with your 1/44 assumption, we can then assume 50% chance that the following day will also be a record setting day (probably too low still but the math is easier). Your one week estimate would be (1/44)*(1/2)^6.
You did not calculate that right. What I wrote comes out to 1/2816, which is fully 8 orders more likely than your initial estimate. And this number is still probably a lot lower than the true probability.
There are A LOT of independent lines of evidence that point very strongly to the conclusion that humans are causing a massively disruptive change to the earth’s climate. This heatwave is not the nail in the coffin, it’s just (small) data point. Trying to oversell it like you are only serves to entrench deniers who will assume that you are making an intentionally misleading argument.
While the data presented here only goes back to 1979, I seem to recall that some scientists worked out global average temperatures based on coral reef core samples and ice core samples. I think there were some other samples too but I can’t remember what they were. So they are the hottest ever
Not terribly significant. The length, number of heat records broken, and sheer catastrophic scale of this heatwave is unprecedented. We don’t have any reason to think anything remotely like this has happened in human history, and the fact that we didn’t have the means to track the entire planet’s average temperature prior to 1979 doesn’t negate that.
Hawaii is on fire. Oregon is on fire. Canada is on fire. California is on fire. The winter in the southern hemisphere is unprecedentedly warm, and much of Australia burned over their summer. It’s going to burn again.
For the hell of it, I checked the list of hottest temperatures recorded and the top for the US was in 1913, Sweeden 1933, Russia 2010, and Germany/France 2019 (for just a small selection of countries). Very few were from this year and many weren’t even in the last half century.
Much of eastern North America is having a relatively cool summer thanks to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Temps in my area have barely broken 85F/30C all summer
Here in Minnesota we’ve gotten plenty of heat, humidity and smoke, which has been just super fun. The entirety of the last month has felt like living in a pack-a-day smoker’s lungs.
…since 1979
Edit: not saying there’s not a climate change disaster happening, but some of these analyses are a little misleading.
Except that to only say “…since 1979” is to comment in either ignorance or bad faith (your pick). We maintained record breaking temps ALL above the prior record for 36 is the damn point, and to miss that is to miss the entire thing.
There have been 44 years since 1979. Lets say the probability of getting 1 day above the 1979 record in a given year is 1/44 (uniform). The probability of even getting a week of the hottest days in one year would be (1/44)^7, would be a one in 300 billion chance. There are some issues and some assumptions I’m making for convenience, but its not ok to make idle comments with no comprehension of the scale of extremity this event represents.
As in, do you have any fucking idea how unlikely that is? This isn’t an ‘oopsie poopsie’ funny record event.
Not to be too pedantic but your back of the envelope probabilities are based on inaccurate assumptions and probably several orders of magnitude off. Specifically, your not just assuming uniform but also independent from one day to the next. A more accurate treatment would be to assume conditional dependence from one day to the next (the Markov property). Once you have a record hot day, you are significantly more likely to have another record hot day following it.
That said, it’s still low probability, just not as low as what you’re saying.
Any thoughts on how I could incorporate that for a better back of the napkin?
(Also, that number is only consider that the number presented was based on 7 independent events, not 34)
If we stick with your 1/44 assumption, we can then assume 50% chance that the following day will also be a record setting day (probably too low still but the math is easier). Your one week estimate would be (1/44)*(1/2)^6.
Great so then it’s only a 1 in half a trillion chance if I calculated that right, I’m feeling better now
You did not calculate that right. What I wrote comes out to 1/2816, which is fully 8 orders more likely than your initial estimate. And this number is still probably a lot lower than the true probability.
There are A LOT of independent lines of evidence that point very strongly to the conclusion that humans are causing a massively disruptive change to the earth’s climate. This heatwave is not the nail in the coffin, it’s just (small) data point. Trying to oversell it like you are only serves to entrench deniers who will assume that you are making an intentionally misleading argument.
While the data presented here only goes back to 1979, I seem to recall that some scientists worked out global average temperatures based on coral reef core samples and ice core samples. I think there were some other samples too but I can’t remember what they were. So they are the hottest ever
I mean if they wanna be really pedantic, the hottest days were before the atmosphere even formed.
I can’t find any indication that 1979 had a 36-day heatwave with anything approaching the temperatures we’re seeing.
I think the significance of 1979 is that’s when we started keeping track of an overall global temperature day by day…
Not terribly significant. The length, number of heat records broken, and sheer catastrophic scale of this heatwave is unprecedented. We don’t have any reason to think anything remotely like this has happened in human history, and the fact that we didn’t have the means to track the entire planet’s average temperature prior to 1979 doesn’t negate that.
Hawaii is on fire. Oregon is on fire. Canada is on fire. California is on fire. The winter in the southern hemisphere is unprecedentedly warm, and much of Australia burned over their summer. It’s going to burn again.
This is an emergency.
For the hell of it, I checked the list of hottest temperatures recorded and the top for the US was in 1913, Sweeden 1933, Russia 2010, and Germany/France 2019 (for just a small selection of countries). Very few were from this year and many weren’t even in the last half century.
https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/List_of_weather_records#Highest_temperatures_ever_recorded
You’re downvoted because you’re comparing one day record temp to a full month of record highs.
Also, a large part of the reason the global average temperature is high is because the Southern hemisphere is having a very warm winter.
Comparing global average to local max temperatures is also wrong.
Much of eastern North America is having a relatively cool summer thanks to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Temps in my area have barely broken 85F/30C all summer
Oh good, maybe the smoke from everything being on fire will cool us down!
/s
Here in Minnesota we’ve gotten plenty of heat, humidity and smoke, which has been just super fun. The entirety of the last month has felt like living in a pack-a-day smoker’s lungs.