> But as the article itself says, we don’t know if this is the start of some trend or if this is a never previously observed fluke.
...That's not how statistics works.
A 2 sigma deviation can be a never previously observed fluke. A 5 sigma variation ... that means that the model is wrong. Observing a 5 sigma variation means that you need to stop, and consider why your model is incorrect.
> Climate change is about regression to a mean that is itself higher than the previous mean.
That's what we've been assuming, but this result upends that assumption.
We talk about a new mean that's 5F higher than the old mean. But an event that's 70F higher than the current mean is also 65F above the the 'new' mean. And that throws out the possibility what we're talking about is a new mean that's higher than the old mean with the same standard deviation.
The brave new world we're walking into doesn't just have a higher average temperature, it also has a significantly higher standard deviation.
And this is potentially catastrophic. If Antarctica is, on average, 5F warmer, but is not prone to significant deviations, then Antarctica stays frozen. This is our old model; maybe the new extremes are a little bit more extreme, but Antarctica is still so cold and the rare high temperature events are mild enough that it's still gonna be super cold, and all the ice that's held up in the Antarctic ice sheets stay there. But if we have wild swings like this one, then our old models are quite simply wrong. We now need to start to consider models where Antarctica melts, and now we need to consider a 190 foot increase in sea level over the next century.
AFAIK that means that a majority of Earth's population will be displaced. NYC, London, Tokyo, Florida, Rio, all gone.