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:
Century-plus records crushed by multiple degrees. Hottest June across Washington Oregon Idaho Utah Nevada Alaska pic.twitter.com/2mfeUbWKqV— Capital Climate (@capital_climate) July 1, 2015And 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.
I see that Alaska is burning up, too.
ReplyDeleteThis 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.
DeleteWe don't want to be left out! Rather a small blaze but linked to the hot weather:
Deletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-33351716
I'll bring the hotdogs if your PM will come.
DeleteActually 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.
I'll bring the hotdogs if your PM will come.
DeleteActually 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.
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?
ReplyDeleteFuture psychologists and sociologists will find WUWT to be a productive source of research material.
What's this about *future* psychologists and sociologists? They're already studying WUWT right now!
DeleteYes, but apparently only by corrupt, incompetent, stupid, unethical, sneaky and devious ones who should be immediately fired in disgrace from their...
DeleteHold on a moment; an alternative explanation just occurred to me.
None of those places are Washington, DC, therefore there is no global warming.
ReplyDeleteAlong 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.
ReplyDeleteOne 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/
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.
ReplyDeleteOne 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/
The smoke reached the Atlantic earlier on Wednesday.
DeleteGod's vengeance on the UK for allowing gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteWhen 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.
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.
DeleteAnd this is not even a taste of things to come, it's just a sniff...
ReplyDeleteBetter 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.
Another miracle from St. Willard of Chico: Watts so hot about 100 in the Seattle 'burbs?
ReplyDelete112-99 = 13, not 23, Russell.
Delete112 - 89 =23, Marco-- read the text in the inset
DeleteYes, Denierville has been quiet about the record high temps. Just the usual scratching around for Ad Hominems and conspiracy theories.
ReplyDeleteSooner or later it will occur to them to blame the El Nino, PDO, AMO or something.
They are probably being distracted by some slight variation in a very small component of Antarctic ice aka Fluffy the Antarctic Sea Ice Squirrel.
DeleteWhilst you did explicitly nominate July - TC Ida was a June TC in the same region in 1972 - which is satellite era.
ReplyDeletehttp://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.
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:
Deletehttp://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.
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!
ReplyDeleteOkay - that makes sense. One of them even brought the first recorded snow to the tropics in that region.
Delete