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Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#41

Post by thesz »

teawrecks wrote: post #22
sublimefire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it a bit clickbaity. The title is correct to the letter but not really to the spirit, because down at the bottom there is: > Temperatures are known to vary wildly over Antarctica, and massive swings are common. Contrasting with this warm spell over eastern Antarctica, the South Pole observed just observed its coldest April to September period on record last year, with an average temperature of minus-78 degree…

I think you're hearing "massive swings" and jumping to the conclusion that 5 std dev is somehow normal-ish behavior for the region. It's not. At all. By definition.

Temperature is bounded to a positive values and it is sufficiently reasonable to at least try to look at temperature distribution as a log-normal distribution, where logarithms of temperature are distributed normally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution

From this vantage point, bigger positive swings are more likely than bigger negative ones - because positive swings are in the range exp(logmean)..infinity and negative ones are in range 0..exp(logmean).

Take a look at second picture in Wiipedia article. The value with CDF(x)=0.75 is about four times bigger for sigma=1 curve than value for CDF(x)=0.25.

And I guess that distribution of temperature in Antarctica is more close to a log-normal distribution than distribution of temperature in, say, Houston or Cancun.

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#42

Post by ianai »

WinterMount223 wrote: post #37
FabHK wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The probability that an observation is beyond 5 standard deviations is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev's_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_distribution

If the observed variable is “the mean temperature in a given day”, 4% can be expected to occur relatively frequently. Anyway until we know the probability distribution, and my intuition says that it’s definitely not Normal for wide periods of time, we can’t say if it’s significant or not.

You’re the only one introducing the normal distribution here.

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#44

Post by tlokas »

yodon wrote: post #38
sublimefire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it a bit clickbaity. The title is correct to the letter but not really to the spirit, because down at the bottom there is: > Temperatures are known to vary wildly over Antarctica, and massive swings are common. Contrasting with this warm spell over eastern Antarctica, the South Pole observed just observed its coldest April to September period on record last year, with an average temperature of minus-78 degree…

When you start calling five sigma events "click-baity" you may find others asking legitimate questions about your ability to assess what is significant. Encountering a headline that tries to get people to read the article is a roughly zero-sigma event. That's the purpose of a headline, and has been for about 150 years. Retailers also sell things for more than they paid for them and supply chains are hard. If you can…

I must agree on the "click-baity" title.

If it wasn't for the article being posted on HN, I would never have clicked on the title, as it includes something like "Scientists are flabbergasted".

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#46

Post by Findecanor »

kadoban wrote: post #13
bruce343434 wrote: post #6

So what will be the consequences of this? Article makes it clear this is not normal, but doesn't really say much else.

Nobody really knows, and it's too late to do anything real about it. Fun times.

Climate change is not boolean. It is not a question of damage or not damage.

It is a question of how much damage.

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#47

Post by neltnerb »

Findecanor wrote: post #46
kadoban wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody really knows, and it's too late to do anything real about it. Fun times.

Climate change is not boolean. It is not a question of damage or not damage. It is a question of how much damage.

Okay, but the frightening part is that this is only true to a point.

And that point is where positive feedback loops dominate at which point it is very much boolean, habitable by humans or not.

But we do not know where that threshold is.

And we may have already passed it.

We just pretend there isn't a real threshold because scientists can't tell us exactly where it is yet so we might as well just keep doing what we've been doing for another 20 years... like we've been using as an excuse for the last 40.

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#48

Post by spacemanmatt »

beeboop wrote: post #35
spacemanmatt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate is the weather, on average. It's not wrong to call this climate change.

The earth is billions of years old. A single week of hot temperatures is not indicative of lasting, permanent change or even a change in a trend in terms of climate

5 sigma.

Re: Eastern Antarctica sees record temperatures 70 degrees above normal

#49

Post by Comevius »

beeboop wrote: post #35
spacemanmatt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate is the weather, on average. It's not wrong to call this climate change.

The earth is billions of years old. A single week of hot temperatures is not indicative of lasting, permanent change or even a change in a trend in terms of climate

We are studying the climate for half a century and we have information about it that goes back to millions of years. We can't wait hundreds of years to draw a conclusion, because the climate is changing so rapidly. We have to prepare now, and our imperfect models are helpful, even though time and time again they turn out to be too optimistic.

This atmospheric river and heat dome phenomenon is part of the rapid changes that are taking place. You can see these significant changes with your own eyes, but they are more obvious at the northernmost areas such as Siberia.

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