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Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

axios.com

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Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#111

Post by rootusrootus »

falcolas wrote: post #88
rootusrootus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 322 Kelvin You know, I think this makes good sense. A degree can be celsius, or fahrenheit, but only a Kelvin is a Kelvin. So this could be unambiguously simplified in the future if we standardized on K.

Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean? The answer is as about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels - it's originally based on boiling and freezing a specific composition of water at a specific pressure, then adjusted so the zero point is at a universal constant. That last is really the only meaningful part about it. And practically speaking, the 0 to 100 C range is no longer even…

> Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean?

Well that's my point :). There are no degrees in K, there are just K. So at least we could remove that little bit of ambiguity.

Otherwise...

> about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels

I agree. All scales are arbitrary.

I actually think F has one upside over both K and C -- more resolution means fractional degrees are rarely used. But that's just a nitpick.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#112

Post by sevagh »

falcolas wrote: post #104
sevagh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Temperature of 48.8C sets new record high in Italy and Europe https://weirditaly.com/2021/08/11/temperature-of-48-8c-sets-... Now there's a readable headline.

Sure, if you're in Italy. TFA is not. Of course, TFA lists the Celsius measurement in the first sentence , but who reads articles these days?

"120 degrees" is completely meaningless. I pointed out that the title is shit. The first sentence explaining the shit title doesn't make the title less shit, right?

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#113

Post by olivermarks »

nerbert wrote: post #37
olivermarks wrote: post #12

How far back do the records go? That wasn't in the article. I'm also interested in where the temperature was taken - hard surface aircraft runways, sun traps etc are often a lot hotter than the overall average temperature.

Isn't it the meteorological standard that temperature should be taken in the shadow, 1m from the ground? Maybe other factors are taken into account.

That's what I understood but recently there has bee some questioning of where data has been captured

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#114

Post by Blikkentrekker »

perardi wrote: post #38

Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. Such as: the feedback mechanisms that may come into play here. Europe, broadly, hasn’t been big on AC. That may have to change, as 322 Kelvin is just not bearable. But that means more power use…which means more energy use…which probably comes from fossil fuels…which means more issues with…

> Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues.

The entire article places Celcius first and Fahrenheit in brackets after it, but the title only gives Fahrenheit without saying that it is? It's quite obviously deliberate clickbait.

Apart from that; it's quite hard to find on this website that it is “U.S.A centric”, which certainly does not appear from the title or the u.r.i., and going to “About Axios” we find:

> We launched Axios in January 2017 based on this shared belief: The world needed smarter, more efficient coverage of the topics shaping the fast-changing world. We pledged to put our audience first, always.

Clearly they profile themselves as news for the world, not for the U.S.A., and so they use their units, but only inside of the article text.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#116

Post by falcolas »

sevagh wrote: post #112
falcolas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you're in Italy. TFA is not. Of course, TFA lists the Celsius measurement in the first sentence , but who reads articles these days?

"120 degrees" is completely meaningless. I pointed out that the title is shit. The first sentence explaining the shit title doesn't make the title less shit, right?

Meaningless, eh? An American news source puts up the title “Europe’s all-time heat record […] at nearly 120 degrees” What’s unclear about this? All of the context needed to properly interpret “120 degrees” comes right before it.

It’s only, as you say, “shit”, if you don’t like that America uses Fahrenheit. Or if you’re looking for a reason to “shit” on American press for using the Fahrenheit scale.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#117

Post by wil421 »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #71
wil421 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why complain? I don't see a lot of comments on HN when the article is from Europe or someone else with the metric system. If you're reading something based in the US expect they will use Imperial measurements.

Italy, despite what many “eye-talyan” Americans might believe, is not in the US.

Not sure if you understand that Axios is based in Virginia. HN is based in California

Would I except something based in Europe to covert their measurements when talking about an American state or city? No and most would not.

Why would a writer convert to something foreign that their audience wouldn’t understand?

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#118

Post by Inate_Hikkers »

bserge wrote: post #74
HenryKissinger wrote: post #27

This is not the case with Italy, but what are we going to do with uninhabitable areas in the future? Think the horn of Africa or parts of the Middle East. Large parts of MENA are already de facto lawless areas, where the official government doesn't exert any meaningful control, due to political factors. Now throw in deadly year-round climates on top. Every piece of land on this planet is claimed as sovereign territor…

What? Extract the resources and not live there. Settle Antarctica. Murder the mass refugees. The usual shit. And yeah, countries will claim and fight over useless pieces of land. There's plenty of people who can be sent to die defending or occupying it. Don't like reality? Downvote and live in lalaland until a "sudden tragedy" happens "out of nowhere".

Iran-Iraq War vibes, tfw lose 100k men only for status quo antebellum. if i get drafted i am deserting to Russia ASAP.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#119

Post by falsaberN1 »

Weird. 3 years ago, on the 2nd and 3rd of August in a particular area in northwest Spain I pass by at times, there were 53ºC. It felt like inescapable death, and it was 100% relative humidity to boot, and residences usually don't have anything like AC installed by default. The locals remember it well (just mention "those really hot days 3 years ago") and I remember the horror of seeing that number on the forecast and urban/house thermometers. And the bad luck to have to be there at that moment.

I wonder why it was not registered? In fact, the highest registered one is like 43ºC for that area, but I've been there other times with a "comfortable" 45 or more. Does it need the city hall to pursue registering? Can the city (a highly touristic one) ignore it to not scare away tourists? (there were like 2000 casualties just for two days, and "Death Valley but with humidity cranked up to 11" doesn't sound like a good slogan). That said, since that summer temperatures went back to below 30-ish in that region, it was clearly a freak occurrence, but I wonder why it's not officially acknowledged.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#120

Post by yokaze »

q1w2 wrote: post #105
lhorie wrote: post #25

That's 48.8 Celsius for the non-americans. Scrolling through the tweets, some people are saying it's likely a short spike in temperature due to foehn winds[0] and that this reading doesn't really mean much due to the source of the reading. Here's an interesting thread nitpicking things apart[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind [1] https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1425424519129407489

Global warming is about average temperature increases. Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world. It does more harm than good to raise the climate change alarm for these events, and requires some statistical gymnastics to conclusively tie it to global warming. The real alarms are more than sufficient.

> Global warming is about average temperature increases. Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world.

That is why it got rebranded to climate change. Yes, it is about the global average temperature, but that is too abstract for people to understand, and exactly gets discussed when "they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world."

> Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world.

Everything and anything gives climate change deniers ammunition. I think, it doesn't make sense to try to placate people, which are essentially inaccessible to decades of scientific reports, and more and more news like this one. No need to self-censure here.

> It does more harm than good to raise the climate change alarm for these events, and requires some statistical gymnastics to conclusively tie it to global warming

You do not have to conclusively tie individual events to global warming. The point here is, that those news come in more and more often. It is something people directly experience. And that is very much a real alarm.

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