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July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

ncdc.noaa.gov

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Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#91

Post by malchow »

BillTheCat wrote: post #46
rnovak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate . In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Seriously, our forecasts are nearly always wrong. So.....saying we can make as accurate of forecasts for 200 years ago...that's not really saying much. Thi…

By "horribly inaccurate" do you mean 3 degrees Celsius off or 20 degrees Celsius off? These aftcasts are accurate enough for us to plot the overall course of global climate change.

Do out of band "aftcasts" correctly show the decade-long global warming hiatus from 1998 to 2008? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#92

Post by downandout »

jedberg wrote: post #37

Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?

By "conservative rhetoric" I assume you mean the only scientifically provable stance that there is on the issue.

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#93

Post by melling »

rnovak wrote: post #41
cryptoz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are significant temperature records that go back much farther than 1880 even. Many navies and armies kept records from all over the world, so we actually have lots more data than people think. There are also bodies of science that deal with 'aftcasting', which is making a weather forecast for a date in the past. These techniques have been refined to the point where we can make 1-day aftcasts for ~1850 that are…

To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate . In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Seriously, our forecasts are nearly always wrong. So.....saying we can make as accurate of forecasts for 200 years ago...that's not really saying much. Thi…

Yeah, your comment about weather is an FAQ. I started a little blog FAQ a few weeks ago so I wouldn't have to repeatedly answer the same questions.

https://2cco2.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/the-difference-betwee...

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#94

Post by malchow »

shogun21 wrote: post #32
pbreit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is that a long time or a little?

In the lifetime of the planet Earth, this is only a little sliver we're looking at. It is important to note that we've been recording since the industrial revolution so this could be the result of human influence.

"A little sliver" indeed!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#95

Post by sanderjd »

caseysoftware wrote: post #72
davidw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to understand why some people seem to be offended by the idea that people cause global warming. I flag all these articles though, because they always end up about politics, given that scientists are mostly in consensus, and very few people here are climate scientists.

Well, if you accept that humans are a major cause of global warming, the equation becomes pretty simple: Limit human behavior or limit the number of humans. Both have scary ramifications.

Even if you don't accept that humans are a major cause of climate change, but you do accept that it is happening, will have disastrous consequences for human survival, and can be mitigated through human action, the equation becomes simple. The "can be mitigated through human action" seems to get tied up in, "humans are a major cause", but they aren't actually the same thing. Instead of the backwards-looking "you did this" slap on the wrist, we should be selling the aspirational "you can help solve this" call to action.

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#96

Post by teraflop »

atourgates wrote: post #27

Is it possible to separate the warming that's caused by man-made pollution/CO2 from the earth's natural cycles? Obviously, we're getting warmer because of pollution, but is that on-top of a natural warming cycle? Being partially counteracted by a natural cooling cycle? Could we all be saved by an ice-age?

There's a ton of information about the available science, from high-level overviews all the way down to nitty-gritty technical details, in the periodic reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They're published every several years, and the most recent one is from 2014.

A good place to start is the so-called synthesis report, which covers a mixture of physical science, human impact and public policy. Page 6 of the "summary for policymakers" includes a graph showing that although the error bars are still pretty big, the observed warming is consistent with estimates of human-caused effects, and vastly larger than can be explained by the "natural cycles" we know about.

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#97

Post by rnovak »

BillTheCat wrote: post #77
rnovak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean turning on the "weather channel" and having it say it's sunny out, only to look outside to see pouring rain across the entire city. That's pretty inaccurate in my book.

That has nothing to do with the temperature.

It's all linked together, and while that statement had nothing to do with temperature, the same can be said in my area with regard to that.

Also, if a meteorologist can't get the current state of the weather correct, why on earth would I trust his statement of what the temperature is going to be like? At that point I'm just going to consider it a guess.

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#98

Post by mturmon »

SimpleXYZ wrote: post #68
[deleted] wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

It doesn't necessarily have to be a "block out the sun" type of project. There are other opportunities, like energy. Surely someone can take a bite out of a 100+ trillion dollar industry in a profitable and green way.

Nest could be seen in this light. In general: Better use of information to lower energy consumption.

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#99

Post by mikeash »

Carrok wrote: post #39

It's interesting to me that if you say "today was hotter than any day on record" The answer given always seems to be global warming. However if you say "today was colder than any day on record" (also happens very frequently) the answer given is "That's weather, not climate." Edit: Apparently this is not interesting to HNers. Bring on the downvotes.

When was the last "coldest month on record"? Let's look at some actual statements about an actual occurrence of it and see if your characterization is correct.

Edit: answering my own question with this data set:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_...

It appears the coldest month on record for this time period is January 1893. I think that the answer to why that extreme wasn't blamed on climate change might be related to an inability to correlate worldwide temperature data at the time, and the fact that nobody knew about climate change at the time.

Re: July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

#100

Post by talmand »

jedberg wrote: post #37

Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?

My usual perusal through political talk hasn't shown that. I still see several references claiming that global warming isn't real. There still seems to be quite a few variations of talking points on both sides of the equation.
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