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Thursday, July 2, 2015

It's getting mighty hot in places, plus a rare tropical cyclone

Sou | 4:02 AM Go to the first of 24 comments. Add a comment
Here's a short article about weather, the sort you won't read at denier blogs like WUWT.

London has just had it's hottest July day on record - with the Guardian reporting 36.7°C (98.1°F) at Heathrow. Wimbledon, where play more commonly stops because of rain, shut the centre court roof to keep out the heat instead. There was a warning that train lines may buckle because of the heat.

Western Europe is even hotter, with 39C in Paris and almost 44C  in Cordoba.

Closer to home there is a cyclone, TC Raquel, south of the equator - in July! That's never been recorded in that area at this time of the year since satellite monitoring began. Here's an image from Earth wind map, showing Tropical Cyclone Raquel and Tropical Storm Chan-Hom to the north of it.


Parts of western North America are sweltering too. There are wildfires raging in Washington State. (Anthony "not quite a meteorologist" Watts finds Washington's record heat "amusing".) Then there is the continuing drought in California (ignored by its resident denier). More on that in today's Washington Post. Capital Climate has put together a list of broken records, in a tweet:



And in the last two weeks 1250 people died in the heat wave in Pakistan, and 65,000 people were treated for heat stroke. That came shortly after one of the worst ever heat waves in India, which killed more than 2,300 people.

Extreme heat is one of the facets of climate change that we'll see more and more of.




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24 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. This image taken last week shows how bad it is. We had some rain the past couple of days, but the smoke is rolling back in.

      Delete
    2. We don't want to be left out! Rather a small blaze but linked to the hot weather:

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-33351716

      Delete
    3. I'll bring the hotdogs if your PM will come.

      Actually if your fire services are not really prepared for forest fires that looks nasty. Something like that, especially with pine, would be a considerable challenge in my part of Canada but we could pull a waterbomber from up north if we really needed it.

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    4. I'll bring the hotdogs if your PM will come.

      Actually if your fire services are not really prepared for forest fires that looks nasty. Something like that, especially with pine, would be a considerable challenge in my part of Canada but we could pull a waterbomber from up north if we really needed it.

      Delete
  2. At what point do the motivated reasoning, partisanship, and ideological biases that are present in all of us to one degree or another cross the threshold into what can only be described as a form of mental illness?

    Future psychologists and sociologists will find WUWT to be a productive source of research material.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What's this about *future* psychologists and sociologists? They're already studying WUWT right now!

      Delete
    2. Yes, but apparently only by corrupt, incompetent, stupid, unethical, sneaky and devious ones who should be immediately fired in disgrace from their...

      Hold on a moment; an alternative explanation just occurred to me.

      Delete
  3. None of those places are Washington, DC, therefore there is no global warming.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Along with Alaska, the Canadian territory of Yukon, and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are in drought conditions and burning merrily away. It appears that Saskatchewan is worst hit with 100+ fires burning in the northern part of the province and somewhere between 2000 and 3000 evacuees with possibly more to come. If these numbers don't seem many I'd guess population density up there is about 1 person / sq km. I heard one report today saying smoke had reached Tennessee. Firefighting planes have been grounded due to poor visibility.

    One official says the yearly firefighting budget has been exhausted. The fire season, IIRC has not begun.

    Prime Minister Steven Harper was one of the two PMs, Japan's Shinzō Abe being the other who watered down the Group of Seven's climate resolution.

    http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/how-bad-are-prairie-fires-you-can-see-the-smoke-from-space/53496/

    ReplyDelete
  5. Along with Alaska, the Canadian territory of Yukon, and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are in drought conditions and burning merrily away. It appears that Saskatchewan is worst hit with 100+ fires burning in the northern part of the province and somewhere between 2000 and 3000 evacuees with possibly more to come. If these numbers don't seem many I'd guess population density up there is about 1 person / sq km. I heard one report today saying smoke had reached Tennessee. Firefighting planes have been grounded due to poor visibility.

    One official says the yearly firefighting budget has been exhausted. The fire season, IIRC has not begun.

    Prime Minister Steven Harper was one of the two PMs, Japan's Shinzō Abe being the other who watered down the Group of Seven's climate resolution.

    http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/how-bad-are-prairie-fires-you-can-see-the-smoke-from-space/53496/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The smoke reached the Atlantic earlier on Wednesday.

      Delete
  6. God's vengeance on the UK for allowing gay marriage.

    When it's hot, London is worst place to be..... except for Paris. I was in both places during Wimbledon 2009 ( for Springsteen's Hyde Park gig, not the tennis). It hit 33 C and there was no escape. Everybody in London had sun burn. 37C must be utter hell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I lived in London for a summer in the 1970s, and came back to Australia pale as a ghost. I was aghast at my co-workers complaining about the heat wave when the thermometer hit 80F (27C), the first bit of spring-like weather of the summer back then. Times are changing.

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  7. And this is not even a taste of things to come, it's just a sniff...

    Better be careful that Spangled Drongo doesn't come to 'correct' you about cyclones Sou... Although I doubt that he would - he's scared of girls.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Replies
    1. 112-99 = 13, not 23, Russell.

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    2. 112 - 89 =23, Marco-- read the text in the inset

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  9. Yes, Denierville has been quiet about the record high temps. Just the usual scratching around for Ad Hominems and conspiracy theories.

    Sooner or later it will occur to them to blame the El Nino, PDO, AMO or something.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are probably being distracted by some slight variation in a very small component of Antarctic ice aka Fluffy the Antarctic Sea Ice Squirrel.

      Delete
  10. Whilst you did explicitly nominate July - TC Ida was a June TC in the same region in 1972 - which is satellite era.

    http://www.australiasevereweather.com/tropical_cyclones/1971_1972/jtwc/tropical_cyclone_ida.htm

    The other notable system was in June 1958.

    In both of these years El Nino - like oceanic conditions prevailed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting, George. Thanks. You got me looking further. I found this paper by a retired Qld meteorologist (a severe weather forecaster from BoM). Most of the winter storms look like they might not rate as tropical cyclones going by the recorded wind speeds, though some probably would:

      http://hardenup.org/umbraco/customContent/media/1153_EastCoastLows_1846-2009.pdf

      Those are all of the east coast. I know there've been some off WA, too.

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  11. Those systems are all east coast lows - cold cored "baroclinic" systems associated with strong upper level jets. The only thing they share with tropical cyclones is that they are wet and windy.Warwick Hughes is going off on his blog - claiming that BoM has somehow forgotten these systems - but Warwick should learn some meteorology first!

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    Replies
    1. Okay - that makes sense. One of them even brought the first recorded snow to the tropics in that region.

      Delete

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