This young person gets it better than some senior scientists » « I feel like half my life is spent goggle-eyed in amazement at the stupidity of humanity

Violent weather

We had a tough time getting sleep last night — a severe thunderstorm slammed into us. Literally slammed us, since the doors to our house, which we had open to encourage air circulation, suddenly all banged shut and then banged open and closed again as we got a little more circulation than we wanted. We were running around the house sealing everything up while the wind howled at us. I had a window open in my office, and I got soaked just walking into close it. Then, for the next several hours, there was a freight train roaring overhead, with constant flashes of lightning. It was not exactly conducive to rest.

The cat disappeared, too. She does not respond well to thunderstorms.

Anyway, our garden was well-watered!

These kinds of fierce storms have been getting more common in recent years. Will people wake up to the reality of climate change someday?

Meanwhile, down south where Republicans rule, the ocean off the Florida coast hit 38°C (101°F if you persist in that clumsy temperature scheme) this week. Imagine a whole seacoast at greater than body temperature! You wouldn’t go to the beach to cool off, you’d go to witness the fish kills washing up on the shore.

Also meanwhile, Sicily is on fire. Temperatures hit 47°C. Much of the island is without power because powerlines have burned down, and underground cables under the roadways have melted.

We’re relatively lucky up here in the north, except for the fact that Canada is occasionally reduced to airborne particulates. People have to figure this out sometime. Right? They will, won’t they?

This young person gets it better than some senior scientists » « I feel like half my life is spent goggle-eyed in amazement at the stupidity of humanity

Comments

  1. hemidactylus says

    I know the overall trend is increasing temperatures, but I don’t know how much can be read into the anomalous spikes of an El Ninoish year. I guess it means future anomalous years will spike even hotter. Those ocean temperature readings off the coast of South Florida are freakishly hot and scary given the recent fun Hurricanes Michael and Ian brought to the Gulf Coast not to mention Dorian on the Atlantic side. El Ninos are supposed to send destructive shear at Cape Verde systems, but SSTs are a factor in MDR development and it’s getting hot out there. The Saharan dust had one job to do this year and showed up late. Fuck!

    Storms like yours seem to be more common during El Nino years, so again spikes versus multiyear trends.

    Yet it looks possible the polar melt may become much worse than anticipated, so beach renourishment a futile bandaid on a gaping sword wound.

  3. wzrd1 says

    Naw, one wouldn’t witness fish kills if swimming to try to cool off.
    You’d be too busy having a heatstroke.
    In 2010, at a water temperature of 87 degrees F (30.56 C) and 100 degrees F (37.78 C), Fran Crippen died of a heat stroke while swimming in the Persian Gulf.
    It’s a unique experience, having to step out of the water to cool off. But, something we actually had to do when we were in Qatar. Thankfully, there, the winds blew most of the summer, turning it into an environment much akin living inside the breeze of a hot hair dryer.

    CO2, it made Venus the heavenly garden spot that it is today. Republicans should move there ASAP.

  5. wzrd1 says

    Oh, had a similar storm here in Harrisburg, PA yesterday around 01:00. Deep in the grasp of the mighty snorezlac, I was awakened by the thunderous winds trying to blow my windows in. Started to drift off and a new racket ensued, oh hail, the glass had better hold.
    Got about another 10 minutes sleep and the thunder started. No trees to block the wind and noise, just the Susquehanna river outside my window, so yeah, bright and loud.
    Irritated, I grumbled back at the raging storm to kindly make noise quietly. Like the kids in their youth, it didn’t listen.

  6. R. L. Foster says

    The recent talk of the AMOC possibly shutting down in the near future is very worrisome. I live in the mid-Atlantic and there’ve been discussions recently about what that could look like. Oddly enough, in a rapidly warming world, the nations surrounding the North Atlantic could actually experience a cooling trend because the Gulf Stream would cease to flow northward. No more warm, tropical waters to keep us all wet and balmy. No one in the world of climatology can say for sure what that would look like. Whatever happens I’m sure it will be disruptive. But even with that staring them in the face the denialists will say it has nothing to do with increased atmospheric CO2. Their refrain is usually the planet has gone through this before and we’ll all be fine.

  7. says

    I live in the UK and read an newspaper article recently suggesting that the Labour party needs to back off climate change in their campaigning because they failed to win a seat they haven’t held for 50 years. Ostensibly a loss caused by the Mayor of London’s ultra-low emissions zone expansion, which is barely even a climate change related policy in the first place. The people who care don’t matter and the people who matter don’t care.

  8. StevoR says

    Plus also this :

    The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air.

    These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the potential to occur every five years or so.A stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gases, also made the European heat wave 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) hotter, the one in the United States and Mexico 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer and the one in China one 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) toastier, the study found.

    Several climate scientists, using tree rings and other stand-ins for temperature records, say this month’s heat is likely the hottest Earth has been in about 120,000 years, easily the hottest of human civilization.

    “Had there been no climate change, such an event would almost never have occurred,” said study lead author Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London. She called heat waves in Europe and North America “virtually impossible” without the increase in heat from the mid 1800s. Statistically, the one in China could have happened without global warming.”

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/climate-change-influencing-july-heat-waves-in-europe-china-and-america-study-says

    Then there’s what’s happening around the South polar region of our planet :

    This winter has confirmed what scientists had feared — the sea ice around Antarctica is in sharp decline, with experts now concerned it may not recover. Earlier this year, scientists observed an all-time low in the amount of sea ice around the icy continent, following all-time lows in 2016, 2017 and 2022. Usually, the ice has been able to recover in winter, when Antarctica is reliably dark and cold. But this year is different. For the first time, the sea ice extent has been unable to substantially recover this winter, leaving scientists baffled.

    ‘Five-sigma’ event unfolding

    Physical oceanographer Edward Doddridge has been communicating with scientists and the community about the drastic changes happening around Antarctica. He said vast regions of the Antarctic coastline were ice free for the first time in the observational record. “To say unprecedented isn’t strong enough,” Dr Doddridge said.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-24/antarctic-sea-ice-levels-nosedive-five-sigma-event/102635204

    Then the graphs on sea ice, ocean surface temperatures, hottest days planet-wide, etc .. like some of those here :

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-08/climate-records-shattered-in-2023-ice-deficit-grows/102577168

    Which are getting pretty undeniable and deserve to be headline news and the wake up call we’re stillsomehow ignoring as a species..

    PS. Hope your cat is okay and feeling safer and happier now PZ.

  9. larpar says

    According to the radar, we had thunderstorms last night. (The other end of the front that PZ reported.) You can’t tell by looking. The rain either got soaked up or evaporated. Dry as a bone and 80F at 8am.

  10. Larry says

    Meanwhile, Phoenix hasn’t had a high temp below 110 for weeks. Expects 115 today. Similar temps for Las Vegas and other cities in the southwest. Yes, its hot during the summer but they’ve never had such high temperatures for such a sustained period of time. It will be interesting to see what this means to the monsoon season, which typically runs from June to September. So far, it has bee dry.

  11. birgerjohansson says

    Northern Italy suffers from big storms, including hailstorms. While this brings welcome precipitation, I assume the storm system was created by the heat fed into the system.
    I do not understand meteorology, beyond the fact that the jet streams are currently “stuck” which tends to be bad.

  12. jacksprocket says

    Problems? Looks like the Gulf Stream could stop within a few years. The UK is around the same latitude as Labrador and Hudson’s Bay. Or Tierra del Fuego in the south. The only reason it’s reasonably warm here is the Gulf Stream.

  15. outis says

    Well dangit, then we weren’t the only ones!
    On the other side of the Atlantic (Milan, ITA), I had to do the same thing with the staircase windows of my mom’s building, as they were banging around something fierce.
    Good thing, ’cause… little did I know that five hours later the city would be hit by an exceptionally strong storm, which has brought down trees all over the place. A 1850-era park in the city center lost 10% of all trees, and I personally saw three down in a 100m radius around our place.
    Not a meteorologist, but I am very much afraid that birgerjohansson has a point, and that the energy fed into the system is manifesting itself in violent ways.

  16. birgerjohansson says

    Akira MacKenzie @ 14
    Ditto. The problem are the ones that ambush you during daytime travel, sans umbrella.
    Or when you are out on a lake with a tiny boat and feel your hair rise from the electric charge. Bad day.

  18. says

    Poor cat. My own kitty is okay with storms, but we had one a couple of weeks ago that took down the tree in our front yard. When I scrambled to get Lulu into her crate so we could get downstairs, she didn’t protest. Normally, she doesn’t want to go near her crate!

    Good kitty got lots of treats and ear scritches for that.

  19. llDayo says

    I can verify the Florida water temperatures. My family and I were down there just last week in the Clearwater/St Petersburg area. It felt like bath water in the ocean and to cool off you literally had to get out and hope the mid to upper 90 degree wind would be enough.

  20. robro says

    Here’s the Guardian story on the Florida water temps with some details: Florida ocean records ‘unprecedented’ temperatures similar to a hot tub.

    A water temperature buoy located in the waters of Manatee Bay at the Everglades national park recorded the high temperature late on Monday afternoon, US government data showed. Other nearby buoys topped 100F (38C) and the upper 90s (32C).

    Normal water temperatures for the area this time of year should be between 73F and 88F (23C and 31C), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). The level of heat recorded this week is about the same as a hot tub.

  21. says

    @8 StevoR said: Which are getting pretty undeniable and deserve to be headline news and the wake up call we’re stillsomehow ignoring as a species..
    I reply: there is a large segment of our u.s. population that will always hate and ignore that because they interpret ‘Wake up call’ as ‘Woke up call’.
    and I’m sure you are getting tired of me saying this for weeks, but: welcome to the apocalypse.
    p.s. thanks StevoR, you (and most others commenting here) always provide good documentation.

  24. =8)-DX says

    I like how the weather guy’s primary worry was whether or not the record could be confirmed. MY DEAR FELLOW, LET ME REFER YOU TO THE NEXT FIVE TO TEN YEARS.
    =8)-DX

  25. birgerjohansson says

    Hemidactylus @ 23
    Yes, but I was unable to find information about cause of death.

    BTW Mick Jagger has his 80th birthday today and is still going strong. So that is good news.

  26. John Morales says

    Yes, but I was unable to find information about cause of death.

    My heuristic is that when no cause of death is reported, it is suicide.

  27. wzrd1 says

    She lost her son to suicide in 2021. She was hospitalized for depression as a consequence of that and statements she had made suggestive of likely self-harm.
    She had recently made a comment on social media to the effect that her son and her heart belong together.
    I won’t say for certain, but it sure looks like a likely suicide.

  28. hemidactylus says

    It’s one of those cases where people on Coyne’s blog are trying to be respectful and dovetail with us and others try to make a big thing of her conversion to Islam. There were some respectful posts over there.

    A Martin Cassidy said: “Apart from being a brilliant musician she highlighted the abuses of the Catholic Church years before the media picked up on it, US obsessive nationalism (why do you need to play the national anthem at a music event?), the mistreatment of women in the music industry (that’s why she cut her hair) – and she was hated for all that. Is it any wonder she struggled through life.”

    AG posted: “There was no one like her! Not even close. This is tough! Sleep in heavenly peace!” and *“ Posting another favorite duet / video from 2 transcendental talents! (I wouldn’t have ever bet any money that she goes first!). I wanna be haunted indeed….”:

  29. StevoR says

    @21. shermanj :

    there is a large segment of our u.s. population that will always hate and ignore that because they interpret ‘Wake up call’ as ‘Woke up call’. and I’m sure you are getting tired of me saying this for weeks, but: welcome to the apocalypse.

    p.s. thanks StevoR, you (and most others commenting here) always provide good documentation.

    Thanks & no worries.

    We’re not quite in the “apocalyse” yet but its certianly looking ominous in so many areas right now.

    .***

    Incidentally therewas a good interview on PBS Newshour again this arvo (at least as broadcast here in Sth Oz) :

    Katey Lesneski, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary:..immediately, when you jump into the water, it feels like you are in a hot tub. Fortunately, the waters on the reefs here are not at 100. They’re in the low 90s. That 100-degree temperature was taken in a shallow landlocked area.

    But we are still seeing temperature records being shattered. And that has direct impact on all of the amazing life on the reefs, including the coral reefs. And what I’m seeing right now are stark white corals that are undergoing what we call bleaching, which, if corals can’t recover, can lead to their pretty immediate death. .. (snip).. So, just from an ecological standpoint, over 25 percent of all of the world’s marine species depend on coral reefs and the structure of corals at some point in their lifetime. So that’s everything from sea turtles and sharks that people love to see to lobster and conch, other commercially fish species, game fish.Florida alone depends on reefs for somewhere between $2 billion and $4 billion dollars a year from tourism and all the other valuable parts of the reef. So, the ecology and the economics are very closely intertwined.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/coral-reefs-off-coast-of-florida-bleached-as-water-temperatures-top-100-degrees-fahrenheit

  30. birgerjohansson says

    In north Sweden, the violent weather is usually late-fall or winter storms. Not fun getting out in thick snow to where trees have fallen on the power pylons.

  31. birgerjohansson says

    In north Sweden, the violent weather is usually late-fall or winter storms. Not fun getting out in thick snow to where trees have fallen on the power pylons.

  32. birgerjohansson says

    If there were more MAGA heads in the state they would blame the weather on ze joos.

  33. StevoR says

    Cross-posting from the Infinite thread – even Palm trees are suffering in the heatwave notably in Spain :

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2189305

    Whilst Saguro cacti are dying in Arizona :

    Arizona’s saguaro cacti, a symbol of the U.S. West, are leaning, losing arms and in some cases falling over during the state’s record streak of extreme heat, a scientist said on Tuesday. Summer monsoon rains the cacti rely on have failed to arrive, testing the desert giants’ ability to survive in the wild as well as in cities after temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) for 25 days in Phoenix, said Tania Hernandez. Liliana Salgado
    Wed, July 26, 2023 at 9:29 AM GMT+9:30·1 min read
    By Liliana Salgado

    PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona’s saguaro cacti, a symbol of the U.S. West, are leaning, losing arms and in some cases falling over during the state’s record streak of extreme heat, a scientist said on Tuesday.

    Summer monsoon rains the cacti rely on have failed to arrive, testing the desert giants’ ability to survive in the wild as well as in cities after temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) for 25 days in Phoenix, said Tania Hernandez.

    “These plants are adapted to this heat, but at some point the heat needs to cool down and the water needs to come,” said Hernandez, a research scientist at Phoenix’s 140-acre (57-hectare) Desert Botanical Garden, which has over 2/3 of all cactus species, including saguaros which can grow to over 40 feet (12 meters).

    Source : https://news.yahoo.com/saguaro-cacti-collapsing-arizona-extreme-235908879.html

    Thanks Reginald Selkirk for that piece.

    Then there’s also this :

    Results from the RHS Extreme Heat Survey in July after the record-breaking heatwave show that plants across the country were damaged. More than 8,000 people responded to our survey in July, painting a clear picture that even established, formerly healthy plants could not cope with the searing temperatures, which reached well above 30°c.

    Techniques that would usually protect plants and help them retain water such as mulching in some cases also proved ineffective against the prolonged heat and drought according to survey respondents. ..(snip).. If we see similar temperatures next summer, gardeners should resist the urge to prune plants that have lost a lot of leaves. Most plants will still have live buds on their stems and branches and will leaf up again when the temperature is right and rain arrives, but pruning after heat and drought can put them under more stress. Come spring, woody plants will show where any dead wood is more clearly, ensuring you can prune the right parts of plants affected by the heat this summer.

    Source : https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/articles/extreme-heat-survey

    Of course, wild flora that isn’t cultivated and doesn’t get any human help to survive is also going to be in huge trouble fromteh heat stress here – and this will have massive consequences too.

  34. birgerjohansson says

    The only things able to thrive in the hellscape we leave behind will be cockroaches, and maybe kaiju.

  35. Pierce R. Butler says

    birgerjohansson @ # 32: … MAGA heads in the state … would blame the weather on ze joos.

    Aw, now you’re talking silly. The governor says to blame it (everything) on the drag queens, and he ought to know!!1!

  36. wzrd1 says

    StevoR @ 33, Aridzona is now also filling man made watering holes for the wildlife and anticipating running out of their current catchment supply and needing to buy water for the wildlife.

  37. Ed Seedhouse says

    Here in Victoria B.C. Canada we seem to have found weather paradise this summer, which is a big improvement over the seemingly endless heat dome two years ago. Yeah, we’ve come in over 25 degrees a few days and flirted with thirty one day, but none of the crazy heat back east.

    The fire season is horrible on the mainland, but here on Vancouver Island we currently have only four wildfires and all of them are either under control or being held. Furthermore they are all well north of Victoria. And we’ve lucked out on the smoke, which has stayed to the mainland and pretty much given us a pass this year, in contrast to 2022.

    Thunderstorms have stayed east of the mainland coast range, along with howling wind and hail.

    I’m well aware that this could easily change any time, but for now I’m grateful with what we’ve had so far. It would be nice to have more precipitation but summer is the dry season here, and we did get a half inch of gentle soaking rain a few days ago.

    My 79 year old body is grateful.

  38. dbinmn says

    This is the new Climate Related Stockholm Syndrome. “That storm last night took down a neighbor’s shed and some trees on the golf course!” “Yeah, but at least we got an inch of rain from it.”

  39. scuba says

    PZ: “ Will people wake up to the reality of climate change someday?”

    I’m not sure what you mean.
    YOU drive long distances
    YOU take flights

    I guess then that by “wake up” you just mean “become aware of”. Not do anything about it, not change one’s own habits, but just know that it’s a real thing.

    Sheesh. How depressing.