TheClimateChanger

Anyways, I digress. Look at this carbon capture scam. They couldn't even capture enough carbon to offset their own emissions!

Not to mention, with no air conditioning or refrigeration, for that matter, climate change would have been much more devastating. There probably would've been billions of deaths already, so I think it would be viewed with much greater urgency. Of course, climate change wouldn't have progressed as it did without all of these modern amenities of industrial society in the first place.

This might be controversial, but I'm not sure air conditioning has been a net positive. It has resulted in a huge rush of population to the so-called sunbelt. These places used to be backwoods hillbillies. I don't think most people realize this, but just 100 years ago, a sizable number of southern white people were illiterate. Not even talking about freed slaves, but the white population. This caused great harm to the interior northeast and Midwest, with a flight of companies to the south where there are laxer labor laws, low taxes, anti-Unionism, etc. If, after the defeat of the South and the freeing of the slaves, we had let them leave the Union, history would have been significantly different. We would have likely had more pro-Socialist politicians. Perhaps instead of a Georgia peanut farmer, a pro-labor Mafioso from Chicago or Detroit would have become president in 1976. Reagan would have stood no chance. The Southerners had nothing to lose since poor education and poverty was endemic to the region, so they just wrapped themselves in a flag (often, ironically, not even the American flag) and a bible. Can you imagine the megalopolitan paradise that an independent North, Midwest and West would have established without this flight to the bottom of the barrel on taxes and labor protections? It's somewhat problematic when a region responsible for 400k American deaths - that has always been unrepentant - can be allowed to become a region of growth at the expense of places who fought against the Southern War of Aggression. I mean the South's biggest exports in the mid 20th century were what - cotton and the KKK? Kind of like Hank Williams, Jr. "If the South Woulda Won" but instead the North wins and kicks the South out after freeing all of the slaves. In this hypothetical, the Great Depression probably doesn't occur - at least not with the same ferocity - and so Roosevelt is not elected to 4 consecutive terms. With no term limits, Bernie Sanders (or another left-leaning populist) may have become essentially president for life.

Not sure the heat was the cause of the power outage. Sounds like severe thunderstorms took out two high voltage lines at a major power plant. And the riots were caused by opportunistic criminals, likely poisoned by the proliferation of leaded gasoline.

By mean temperature, it is typically the hottest in the CWA. Maybe other portions of New Jersey outside of the Upton CWA are warmer. The siting near the Bay probably elevates overnight lows enough to offset the slight cooling effect on daytime maxima.

Upstate data confirms 1977 as a cold summer. Syracuse - mean temp of 66.9F, which is 11th coldest on record. Last matched in 2000, and exceeded in 1992 - both recognized as extremely cold summers. Albany - mean temp of 68.0F, which is 16th coldest on record. As in the case of Syracuse, not seen since 2000. Pittsburgh - mean of 67.9F, second coldest on record. There hasn't been a year since that was even close to it. Perplexing how Central Park could reach 104F, when places upstream barely topped 90F that summer? What generated that heat? As you said, it can't get hot on southerly wind... so it must have come from the west? Yet there were no hot temperatures to the west.

1977 would be a summer of yore [in terms of cold, not heat] today. Freezing cold compared to most summers nowadays. Sorry, I don't buy all of those 100s at Central Park. Central Park is typically one of the cooler spots, not the absolute hottest spot. That makes zero sense. Why would a park be hotter than an asphalt-ridden airport? 74.8F mean at EWR is COLD compared to most summers. This is not believable:

Yeah, but like I said in the other thread, that might actually be a cold summer for a +1.5C world. Imagine when the weather gods bless us with the right pattern to maximize heat. It might blow way by those levels.

Don't forget about natural variability. Like recent summers - well above historical norms - might actually be unusually cold summers for a +1.5C world. You need at least 30-50 years of data to get a full sense of what the climate of a given region is capable of producing in terms of extremes. Right now, we only have a couple of years' worth of data at +1.5C. It might be that, given the right pattern, we could see a summer far exceeding anything ever recorded.

NCEI has last summer as the warmest on record for the Northern District of New Jersey, which is well supported by that data. 1993 was very hot, no doubt, but overall mean temperatures were somewhat higher last summer. So, it's funny to argue there's been a lack of recent heat waves when just last summer was one of the hottest on record in that area.

Newark is clearly the hot spot, but 1993 was next level. It's like going from Barry Bonds to Barry Bonds on steroids and human growth hormone.

For comparison, here are the two most recent summers where EWR was warmest but only by 0.5F over the second. To be honest, by mean temperature, last summer was very comparable overall to 1993 in NWS Upton's CWA. Some places with overlapping data were even warmer last year... Islip, for instance, was 1.7F warmer in 2024 than 1993. Even in 2023, Islip was 0.1F warmer than 1993.

It was the warmest site in NWS Upton's CWA by 1.7F that summer by mean temperature. It still tends to be the warmest site, but not nearly by that much. And the max temperature data from Wayne [second warmest mean] is highly suspect with nearly 20 more 90+ days than even EWR. Next closest was LGA, which was 2.3F cooler.

Just look at Morgantown, West Virginia, it was 86F today. In 1882, the hottest temperature observed all year was 85F. I think some would greatly benefit by recognizing that not every summer is going to have 25-30 days of 90F. That's not typical at all.

This has been a fine spring for Dayton, Ohio. A little on the wet side, but almost no snow and warm temperatures. In fact, if the month ended yesterday, this would go in the books as the 7th warmest spring at the Dayton International Airport (since 1936, excludes threaded records). And this doesn't even include today's torch. People like to act as though it's supposed to be in the 90s all summer long, but that's just not how the climate works. There have been entire years where the hottest temperature observed at Dayton was only a handful of degrees above today's warmth. So I would urge everyone to enjoy the next couple of days, instead of fretting over whether it's going to be in the 60s and rainy next week. As JB says, "enjoy the weather, it's the only weather you've got."

This jives with my recollections. It was much snowier as a child. Just look at the data for Cleveland. Snowfall has been in a free fall since 2014. This winter was considered a harsh winter, but just two decades ago, it would have been heralded as a very mild winter. I would expect that trend to increase with time.

Daily record of 93F at Chicago O'Hare. Midway Airport reached 94F.

Here is New Brunswick, NJ versus Newark for July 1993. New Brunswick was 0.6F above the 1991-2020 normal [measured with standard MMTS] versus Newark 4.3F above 1991-2020 normal [with HO-83]. Certainly seems highly suspect to me. One note - there appears to be a 1-day offset for the New Brunswick data, as the observation must have been taken the following morning and ascribed to that day [even though the maximum would have occurred the prior afternoon].

I also wouldn't put much stock into the 1986-1995 era, which shows tons of big heat. The HO-83 had a significant warm bias. See: Inside the HO83 Hygrothermometer « Climate Audit Here is comparative data from Lincoln, NE, for 1991 & 1992, comparing readings from the HO-83 versus a newly installed ASOS. There was only 1 day where the HO-83 max was lower than the ASOS. On one date, it was 7 degrees warmer! We have to remember our ability to measure temperature today is better than at any point in history. As almost any bias results in a warmer temperature [except for poor calibration, which could go either way, and shading, which introduces a cool bias], this naturally makes it more difficult to reach these lofty readings with regularity. Shading is probably a bigger issue today. I know NYC doesn't comply with setbacks and I see trees around a lot of sites.

I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the older records. It's not always an apples-to-apples comparison to modern data. The thermometers were typically housed in cotton region shelters on rooftops, which can introduce significant warming bias relative to ground-based readings. No correction is ever made for this bias. By the time they decommissioned the Baltimore Common House station, it was reporting dozens more days of 90+ than the airport. Watts somehow flips this to say it's causing a warming bias, when a more reasonable conclusion is that if we continued measuring temperature consistently at Baltimore, there would be dozens of additional days at or above 90F each summer. See: How not to measure temperature, part 48. NOAA cites errors with Baltimore's Rooftop USHCN Station – Watts Up With That?

It takes decades to get the full panoply of possible climatological outcomes in a stable climate. We have only surpassed 1.5C for a couple of years. Even if temperatures were to stabilize at this point for several decades, we would likely eventually see a summer heat wave exceeding anything of record as we started to "feel" the full impact of variability upon a new climatological state.

While less impressive from a historical standpoint, EWR saw 10 straight 90+ days in early August 2022. They also had streaks of 14 days (2010) and 12 days (2012), since 2002.

As recently as 2022, a 6-day heatwave at JFK matched its third longest string on record. A completely separate 8-day heatwave at LaGuardia later in the same summer also matched its 3 longest streak.

There's nearly 100 years with, more or less, complete data for May in the threaded record. As for that claim, possible, but unlikely. Fort Frances, Ontario is just across the border from International Falls and shows 0 days of 90+ that month. The second closest site (Littlefork Ranger Station) recorded 1 day.

It's observed from space. Less reflectivity would make it appear somewhat dimmer.