TheClimateChanger

Almost a taste of fall out there today with the gloom and early afternoon temperatures not much better than 70F.

Just for the record, those are for downtown Dayton. The airport, where official records are kept is 200-300 feet higher in elevation and north of the city near Vandalia, Ohio. Point-click forecast centered over Cox Dayton International Airport is slightly lower, but still suggests at least 2 days at or above 90F and a close call on Tuesday of next week. Either way, I'm sure Spartman will be much relieved to see the 90+ drought come to an end. Sunday Sunny, with a high near 91. Sunday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 69. Monday Sunny, with a high near 93. Monday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 66. Tuesday Mostly sunny, with a high near 89.

It’s also worth pointing out that the IPCC already suggests we were at 1.5C of warming relative to 1850, even in 2015. So by that metric, we would likely be approaching 2C of total warming already. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/

New paper from preeminent American climate scientist James Hansen suggests we breach 1.5C of globally averaged warming by next year. Thoughts? http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/UhOh.14August2023.pdf

What is incredible to me is just 12 years ago, even hardcore believers in climate change couldn’t fathom the possibility of 3C of warming by 2060. Now, here we are in 2023, and already exceeding 1.5C of warming. Scientists are saying we will likely breach 2C during the 2030s. It doesn’t seem so far fetched now, does it? And these new findings about the methane really supports my analogy of earth’s climate as a seesaw.

This is a fascinating article. This would validate some of my predictions. Here's what I told WeatherRusty about 12 years ago in a PM:

Now, up to 12 consecutive days at or above normal. Very good chance today will bring that figure up to 13; however, tomorrow appears to be slightly below normal. If we somehow reach normal tomorrow, the streak will almost certainly end on Friday and Saturday with much cooler low temperatures forecast. Despite having had only 2 below normal days as of the middle of the month, the month-to-date departure only stands at +0.8F, as there have been no dates with significant departures from normal.

Bit of a disagreement on the Td's in Iowa between guidance. GFS shows unbelievably comfortable Td's for mid-August, while the Euro brings in the jungle at the same time. 0z Euro (valid at 18z Monday) 6z GFS (valid at 21z Monday)

In other climate news besides the extreme heat in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, deadly fires have broken out on Maui in recent days. The State of Florida is off to an incredibly scorching start to the month of August, about a third of the way through the month. Florida is coming off of its hottest July on record, and things have only heated up further this month. Most places have far exceeded standing records for hottest first 10 days of August. Here's a look at the 5 hottest periods on record at several locations in the State: Miami, FL (1896-present) Orlando, FL (1892-present) Key West (1872-present) Marathon (1950-present) Fort Myers (1892-present) Daytona Beach (1923-present) Tampa (1890-present) Tallahassee (1893-present)

Interesting... Exactly normal for the month to date. Technically, there hasn't been a below normal day since August 2 - granted 4 of those days since have been exactly normal.

New all-time record dropped in Valencia, Spain, where the proverbial mercury climbed to 46.8C - beating the prior record by a whopping 3.4C. It was so hot that most commenters on Twitter/X are suggesting the reading had to have been erroneous or taken on the ground. The Spanish national weather service had to put out a statement confirming the validity of the reading, amid all of the doubters.

Interesting. It might have been driven by lows, but it certainly wasn't a result of the urban heat island effect. Mount Washington, NH (Pop: 0) Caribou, ME (Pop: 7,396)

No, I was talking about New England. Literally right above that Twitter link, I had posted the NCEI data for July 2023 showing it was the hottest month on record in New England (dating to 1895). The Twitter link showed it was also the most humid month on record for New England (dating to 1940), according to the ERA-5 reanalysis. How could the hottest and most humid month on record, not be properly described as intense heat? Obviously, when I said "intense heat" I meant relative to normal for New England. It might not be intense compared to Florida or Arizona, but it was literally as hot and as humid as you can possibly get in New England based on historical averages.

It's funny to me how so-called climate skeptics can reject the incredible wealth of scientific evidence supporting the anthropogenic global warming theory, yet latch onto whatever sort of new, random theory someone puts out to explain recent warming. All of that healthy skepticism flies right out the window when there's something you can point to other than human-induced carbon pollution.

The idea that volcanos can have a significant impact on temperature has already been pre-bunked by Ryan's climate denying friend and minister of truth, Anthony Watts. See here, here, and here, for examples. But on a more serious note, that's a bunch of baloney about Hunga Tonga. Billions of years of earth's history and there's no evidence for a "volcanic summer" until 2022. You do realize something like 70% of the globe is water. How many undersea volcanoes have erupted over the millennia? The sulfur aerosol claims are nonsense too. Nobody pedaling that theory has yet proven or shown that aerosol concentration is currently lower than it had been. How in the world can reduced aerosols be the cause of the recent warming if aerosol concentrations are unchanged? If somebody can offer proof that aerosol concentrations are significantly lower than they had been, then I would be willing to entertain the theory. All the data I've looked at from NASA and NOAA suggests recent aerosol concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere have actually been quite elevated from all the wildfire smoke. So if anything aerosols are contributing to some degree of cooling. The bottom line is Professor Mann is 100% correct. It's not aerosols, it's not Hunga Tonga, and it's certainly not unicorns or fairy dust. It's carbon pollution, just like Professor Mann and other climatologists have been predicting for many decades.

NOAA has confirmed July 2023 was the hottest month on record for New England, with a mean temperature of 71.0F - an incredible 4.4F above the 20th century mean. Compounding the intense heat, dewpoints were also at record levels for the month, resulting in an amplified increase to the apparent temperature.

Looking solely at minima, this year was the highest on record by a full degree. That's a substantial deviation when you are considering a whole region. The mean regional minima was 61.4F this year - an astounding 6.1F above the 20th century mean! Prior to 2013, there had never been a July with a mean minimum in excess of 60F.

Hottest month on record in New England as a whole, and yet we have posters from New England on here calling it the year without a summer. Go figure. Incredibly, 4 of the top 10 hottest Julys on record in New England have occurred within the last six years, and both of the top 2 within the last four years. By comparison, only 3 of the top 10 hottest Julys date back to the 111-year period from 1895 and 2005.

July 2023 was the 11th hottest July on record in the United States. Maine, Florida, Arizona, and New Mexico all experienced their hottest July on record, with an additional 8 states seeing a top five warmest month. Only 5 states - all in the upper midwest - were significantly below the average. The only non-21st century years with hotter Julys than this nationally were 1936, 1934, 1901, 1931, and 1980 [the latter two by less than one tenth of a degree]. So while we may not have been quite as hot as other parts of the globe, it certainly wasn't a mild month by any stretch of the imagination in the U.S.

July finished up as the 11th warmest nationally, and 27th warmest in the Commonwealth. It was the hottest July on record in Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and Maine. Delaware, California, Texas, Louisiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, also had Top 5 warmest months, while Nevada and Utah just missed that metric (finishing in 6th place). Only 5 states (Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska) experienced temperatures significantly below the median year.

Some data from downtown Toronto: July 1841: July 1842: July 1865: July 1868: