How hot is it in up north?

It was so hot that Talkeetna, Alaska hit 96°F on Monday — warmer than Miami — blow past the previous record of 91°F set in June of 1969 (and matched on Sunday). Talkeetna is the city that the TV show Northern Exposure was supposedly based on.

It was so hot the AP and others simply couldn’t resist headlines like “Baked Alaska: Unusual Heat Wave Hits 49th State.”

It was so hot that Valdez, Alaska hit 90, smashing the previous all-time record of 87 set in June 1953. The National Weather Service issued this release in ALL CAPS (either because they were so fired up by this heat wave or because they issue all such releases in all caps):

EXCITEMENT ABOUNDED THIS AFTERNOON ACROSS NORTHEASTERN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND AS UNUSUALLY HOT TEMPERATURES WERE FELT ACROSS THE REGION. FOR THE PAST SEVERAL DAYS . . . HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORDS HAVE BEEN TIED OR BROKEN . . . BUT TODAYS TEMPERATURES SOARED BEYOND ANYTHING PREVIOUSLY SEEN IN THIS AREA.

IN VALDEZ . . . THE DAILY HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORD OF 75 DEGREES SET IN 1997 WAS SHATTERED WHEN . . . AT 45 MINUTES AFTER 3 PM…THE MERCURY IN OUR THERMOMETER SHOT UP TO 90 DEGREES. AFTER A BRIEF DIP BACK INTO THE UPPER 80S . . . THE MERCURY AGAIN REGISTERED 90 DEGREES AT 15 MINUTES BEFORE 6 PM.

THIS ALSO CRUSHED THE ALL-TIME RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR ANY DAY OF THE YEAR . . . AND FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE . . . WHICH WAS 87 DEGREES AND WAS ACHIEVED TWICE . . . ON BOTH THE 25TH AND THE 26TH OF JUNE IN 1953. A LOCAL WEATHER SPOTTER IN TOWN RECORDED A HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 87 DEGREES NEAR THE HOSPITAL DURING THE MID-AFTERNOON HOURS TODAY AS WELL.

SUN-WORSHIPERS WERE OUT IN FORCE THROUGH THE MID TO LATE EVENING HOURS . . . AS THE TEMPERATURE AT 10 PM WAS STILL AN ASTOUNDING 77 DEGREES.

It was so hot that former governor Sarah Palin unquit her job on Fox News just so she would have an excuse to visit the East Coast. Well, maybe that wasn’t the reason, but still, it was friggin’ hot!

Climate Central notes in their story, “Alaska is one of the fastest-warming states in the U.S., largely because the nearby Arctic region is warming rapidly in response to manmade global warming and natural variability. In recent years, Alaska has had to content with large wildfires, melting permafrost, and reduced sea ice, among other climate-related challenges.”

Heat wave conditions have claimed the lives of over 500 people in India since April. India’s Department of Disaster Management reported that 524 people have died of sunstroke since April 1. The Indian Meteorological Department said tomorrow’s forecast called for clear skies and continued heat, warning that “the heatwave will continue.”

The Times of India reported that the state of Hyderabad’s 500 sunstroke deaths in just three days is the highest such death toll in recent history.

New Delhi saw 43 degrees C (or over 109 degrees Fahrenheit) today, western states such as Gujarat saw highs between 116-118 degrees Fahrenheit, and the northern state of Uttar Pradesh hit 45 C (113 F). This state is one of the nation’s poorest, with 190 million people. Its energy infrastructure is inadequate to the demand of so many residents trying to cool themselves. Since pumps are often required to provide water, this also means that a power outage comes with a water outage. Angry residents attacked power company officials and even set fire to a power station. For the rest of the population, power outages combined with humidity caused most people to stay indoors.

India’s neighbor Pakistan has responded to its own extreme heat by turning off the air conditioning government offices and telling civil servants not to wear socks.

The government may be moving to include heat waves as natural disasters covered by the National Disaster Relief Fund, which provides financial compensation for victims’ families.

It isn’t just the daily highs during a heat wave that cause suffering, the daily lows are also dangerous. State capital Jaipur saw a low of over 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, well above average.

Kanpur resident Bholanath Paul said, according to Newstrack India: “Summers are always difficult but usually the temperatures come down in the evenings. But this time even that is not happening. It remains hot during the night too.”

One odd development: fruit prices dropped as sellers tried to clear out their inventory in anticipation of food spoilage.

Tourist Eijaz Ahmed came to India to escape the heat in Mumbai, and instead found record-breaking heat no matter where he went: “I am here with my family and have come from Mumbai to enjoy the cold weather, but it is very hot right now.”

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Source: Environment America

The vast majority of Americans have experienced a weather-related disaster in the past six years, according to a report released today by the Environment America Research and Policy Center.

The report, which is based on disaster declaration data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, found that 243 million Americans — nearly four out of five — have lived in a county that has been hit by at least one federally declared weather-related disaster since 2007. The breadth and impact of these disasters, which include drought, tropical cyclones, flooding, tornadoes, wildfires and snow and ice storms, has been significant. According to the report:

• Every U.S. state besides South Carolina has experienced a weather-related disaster since 2007, and in 18 states and the District of Columbia, weather-related disasters have affected every county.
• More than 19 million Americans live in counties that have averaged one or more weather disaster per year since 2007.
• In 2012 alone, there were at least 11 disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Hurricane Sandy, which, with a price tag as high as $70 billion, was the costliest weather-related disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina.
• Eight U.S. counties in South Dakota, Oklahoma and Nebraska have been hit by ten or more weather disasters since the beginning of 2007.

The report notes that the frequency and intensity of several weather-related disasters has increased over the last several years and is predicted to continue increasing as the climate warms. Intense rainfall, for instance, has become more frequent in the U.S., with “the rainiest 1 percent of all storms delivering 20 percent more rain on average at the end of the 20th century than at the beginning,” and this increase is predicted to continue. And it’s likely the record-breaking heat waves, drought and wildfires that have gripped the country in the last few years will also become more common as the planet warms. The link between tornadoes and climate change is more tenuous and complicated (see here).

The report is in line with other studies of its kind — in February, a report from the Center for American Progress found that in 2011 and 2012, 43 states experienced extreme weather events that caused at least $1 billion in damage, and these events caused 1,107 fatalities and up to $188 billion in damage in total. To slow the increase of many kinds of extreme weather events, the Environment America report calls on federal and state governments to implement caps on greenhouse gases — especially on high-emitting sources, such as power plants and the transportation sector — and adopt goals of reducing emissions by at least 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and at least 85 percent by 2050.

A new report confirms that the extreme heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires that have wracked Australia over the past decade have been exacerbated by climate change. The report, commissioned by the Australian government’s Climate Commission, makes clear that these weather events will only get worse in the coming years, and warns that health and emergency professionals as well as citizens must prepare for their impacts now.

The study’s chief commissioner Tim Flannery said the study’s results mean Australia needs to take action to slow climate change.

FLANNERY: Records are broken from time to time, but record-breaking weather is becoming more common as the climate shifts. Only strong preventative action, with deep and swift cuts in emissions this decade, can stabilize the climate and halt the trend towards more intense extreme weather.

The study examines five impacts of climate change that have already begun to affect Australia:

• Heat: Australia broke 123 weather records in 90 days this summer. In January, Sydney hit a record 114 degrees, and the south Australian town of Moomba hit 121.3 degrees. The report notes that in Australia, there has been more than three times the number of record hot days than record cold days in the past 10 years. The heat has majorly impacted the country: in 2009, a heatwave led to 980 heat-related deaths, which is three times the average mortality rate for heatwaves, and heat has contributed to bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
• Rainfall: Extreme rainfall in Queensland in 2010 and 2011 led to record-breaking and damaging floods, which broke river height records at more than 100 observation stations. As temperature increases, the report found that the likelihood of torrential rainfall events will increase as well in some areas — a finding consistent with climate change predictions.
• Drought: Australia emerged from a decade-long drought in 2009, which was said to be the worst in the country’s history. The report states the drought was estimated to have caused an 80 percent reduction in grain production and a 40 percent reduction in livestock production, and climate models predict that rainfall in southern and eastern Australia will continue to decrease as the century progresses.
• Bushfires: Australia has seen an increase in fire weather (hot, dry, windy days) over the last 30 years, and the fire season in southeast Australia has extended into November and March. The Black Saturday fires of 2009 killed 173 people and cost about A$4.4 billion. As the duration of hot, dry days is likely to increase in much of Australia, wildfire risk is also predicted to go up.
• Sea level rise: Climate change has already contributed to a 21 centimeter rise in global sea levels, the report states, and  major flooding in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010 in Australia’s Torres Strait Islands were likely made more damaging by the increases in sea level.

The study confirms what climate scientists have warned for years — that climate change will likely lead to an increase in extreme weather events. It comes at a time when the effects of climate change are being felt not just in Australia, but around the world: Drastic melting of Arctic sea ice has been linked to a bitterly cold Spring in parts of Europe and North America that has devastated sheep farmers, and the record-breaking drought that affected more than half of the continental U.S. in 2012 is expected to continue into this spring and summer.

The Australian government’s Climate Commission — an independent panel of experts set up by the government but not subject to its direction or oversight — issued a new report on Monday labeling Australia’s latest summer season the “Angry Summer” in honor of the rash of brush fires, heat waves, torrential rains and flooding that pounded the country.

“Australia has always been… a land of extremes,” the report said, but global warming of 0.8 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years and the resulting climate change is now driving the extreme weather to new heights. “All extreme weather events are now occurring in a climate system that is warmer and moister than it was 50 years ago,” the report warned. “The basic features of the climate system have now shifted and are continuing to shift.”

At least 123 weather records were broken during the 90-day time frame examined by the report, including the hottest summer since record-keeping began in 1910, the hottest day for Australia as a whole ever recorded, and the hottest seven consecutive days ever recorded. The commission ran through the severity and influencing factors of each form of extreme weather Australia has seen:

• Record-Breaking Heat: Australia has only seen 21 days in 102 years in which the average maximum temperature for the whole country exceeded 39 degrees Celsius, and eight of them hit this summer. On top of that, the record-breaking heat occurred in the absence of an El Niño — the 12 to 18-month periods of warm, dry conditions that cyclically roll through — which usually has accompanied Australia’s previous hottest summers. Even the small shift in Australia’s average temperature of 0.9 degrees Celsius that’s occurred since 1910 can have profound effects on the severity and frequency of hot weather, as it alters the distribution of extreme weather’s likelihood.
• Brush fires: As many as 40 brush fires tore through Tasmania this summer, destroying around 25,000 hectares of land, 200 properties, and 21 businesses. Other rashes of fires hit New South Wales and Victoria. Climate change can leave soil and plant life drier while extending the life of the fire season. In fact, the Forest Fire Danger Index, the numerical gauge used to assess the threat of brush fires, had to be extended on the high end in 2009 due to the increase in extreme weather.
• Heavy rain and flooding: Unusually heavy rains triggered severe flooding in areas of New South Wales and Queensland this summer, breaking many daily rainfall records throughout the area. The most impressive was the one-day rainfall averaged over the Burnett catchment, which beat out the previous record by almost 70 percent. By raising ocean and air temperatures, climate change increases evaporation and moisture content in the air, resulting in heavier individual rainfalls even as overall precipitation goes down in many areas.

Other extreme weather events Australia dealt with this past summer include tornadoes that touched in Bundaberg and other Queensland townships, as well as two tropical cyclones that hit the north and northwestern coasts of the country.
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by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

A new paper published in Climatic Change by Coumou, Robinson, and Rahmstorf (CRR13) examines the increased frequency of record-breaking monthly temperature records over the past 130 years, finding that these records are now five times more likely to occur due to global warming, with much more to come.

“…worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming. This implies that on average there is an 80% chance that a new monthly heat record is due to climatic change … Under a medium global warming scenario, by the 2040s we predict the number of monthly heat records globally to be more than 12 times as high as in a climate with no long-term warming.”

Figure 1: Observed record ratio (the increase in the number of heat records compared to those expected in a world without global warming) for monthly heat records as it changes over time (thin red line is annual data, thick red line smoothed with half-width 5 years). This is compared with predictions from a simple stochastic model based only on the global mean temperature evolution (blue line with uncertainty band directly comparable to the smoothed red curve)

Data and Methods

CRR13 considers the formula for the probability of a record-breaking extreme in a Gaussian (bell curve) time series with a linear long-term warming trend, compared to the much more simplified version of the same formula when there is no warming trend.  The paper then examines the ratio of those two equations – the increased frequency of record-breaking extreme heat events in a warming world.

The study uses global surface temperature data provided by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) for 1880–2010, in 2° by 2° grids across the globe, excluding polar regions above 70° latitude due to the sparse temperature station coverage there  They examine the temperature data for each calendar month of the year.

Results

CRR13 finds that the number of observed heat records is much larger than one would have expected in a climate with no long term warming, and many monthly heat records have been broken over the past decade.

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Projected average increases in the number of days with a maximum temperature greater than 95°F between 2041-2070, compared to 1971-2000 assuming continued increases in global emissions.

The draft of the Federal Advisory Committee’s National Climate Assessment was released several days ago, with dire warnings of significantly higher temperatures across the nation bringing more heat waves, deluges, droughts, and other forms of extreme weather. It also concluded that much of the climate change seen over the last 50 years was primarily driven by human activity.

But the report also had more locally relevant news for residents of Washington, D.C., which just experienced a record-breaking 11 straight days of temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit this past summer. If humans continue driving up the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at their current pace, the number of days D.C. sees over that temperature threshold could increase by more than 15 days per year by mid-century:

If emissions continue to increase… warming of 4.5ºF to 10ºF is projected by the 2080s; if global emissions were reduced substantially… projected warming ranges from about 3ºF to 6ºF by the 2080s.

Under both emissions scenarios, the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves is expected to increase, with larger increases under higher emissions. Regional climate model simulations suggest that the southern part of the region, including large parts of West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware could experience more than a doubling of days per year over 95ºF by the 2050s.

Much of the southern portion of the region, including the majority of Maryland, and Delaware, and southwest West Virginia and New Jersey, are projected to experience more than 15 additional days per year above 95°F, which will impact the regions vulnerable populations, infrastructure, and agriculture and ecosystems.

2012 was Washington, D.C.’s hottest year, with records going back all the way to 1871. And this past summer was the third hottest the city has seen in that time — and the two summers that beat it out were 2010 and 2011.

According to the climate assessment, the snowless winters the nation’s capital has recently experienced could become the norm as well. If greenhouse gases continue their current rapid increase, the number of days when temperatures dip below 32 degrees Farehnheit would decrease by 25 percent between now and 2050 — a total drop of 20 days.

Along with the heat, D.C. also dealt with persistent drought in 2012, leading to rainfall about 8 inches below normal. Conversely, and consistent with global warming’s tendency to drive more erratic weather, the District has also been hit with more severe flooding as recently as 2006. And the city is already adapting: Thanks to its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Washington, D.C. was recognized in 2011 and 2012 as the number one U.S. EPA Green Power Community. The city is constructing a floodgate on the National Mall to protect its core from flooding, it surpassed 1.5 million square feet of green roofs in 2012, and it grew its tree canopy by 818 acres between 2006 and 2011 — bringing added shade, cooler temperatures, and reduced energy use.

Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research News Release

On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten [full graphic in the study]. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The last decade brought unprecedented heat waves; for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009, and in Europe in 2003,” lead-author Dim Coumou says. “Heat extremes are causing many deaths, major forest fires, and harvest losses – societies and ecosystems are not adapted to ever new record-breaking temperatures.” The new study relies on 131 years of monthly temperature data for more than 12.000 grid points around the world, provided by NASA. Comprehensive analysis reveals the increase in records.

The researchers developed a robust statistical model that explains the surge in the number of records to be a consequence of the long-term global warming trend. That surge has been particularly steep over the last 40 years, due to a steep global-warming trend over this period. Superimposed on this long-term rise, the data show the effect of natural variability, with especially high numbers of heat records during years with El Niño events. This natural variability, however, does not explain the overall development of record events, found the researchers.

Natural variability does not explain the overall development of record events

If global warming continues, the study projects that the number of new monthly records will be 12 times as high in 30 years as it would be without climate change. “Now this doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today – it actually is worse,“ Coumou points out. For the new records set in the 2040s will not just be hot by today’s standards. “To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date,” explains Coumou. “And this is just the global average – in some continental regions, the increase in new records will be even greater.”

“Statistics alone cannot tell us what the cause of any single heat wave is, but they show a large and systematic increase in the number of heat records due to global warming,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-author of the study and co-chair of PIK’s research domain Earth System Analysis. “Today, this increase is already so large that by far most monthly heat records are due to climate change. The science is clear that only a small fraction would have occurred naturally.”

Related Post:

• Nature: Strong Evidence Manmade ‘Unprecedented Heat And Rainfall Extremes Are Here … Causing Intense Human Suffering’
• Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”

by James Bradbury and Sarah Parsons, via the World Resources Institute

According to new data, 2012 was a chart-topping year for the United States – but not in a good way.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Climate Data Center (NCDC) recently declared 2012 to be the hottest year on record for the contiguous United States. This year shattered the previous record temperature, set in 1998, by 1.0°F. The year was also marked by 11 extreme weather events that each caused more than $1 billion of damages.

In a year that brought the United States record-breaking wildfire activity, an ongoing drought, and Hurricane Sandy, perhaps these announcements aren’t surprising. But they are troubling: Record-breaking temperatures and the rising frequency of extreme weather events illustrate that climate change is happening. These trends are expected to worsen the longer we delay serious action to reduce carbon pollution.

Take a look at a few of the figures illustrating the intensity and impacts of 2012’s extreme weather and climate events:

Temperature Records

• 356: Number of all-time temperature highs tied or broken in the United States in 2012
• 5-to-1: The ratio of daily record highs to daily record lows in 2012 – the largest ratio of this kind since record-keeping began in 1895
• 55.3°F: The average temperature in the United States in 2012 (3.3°F higher than the 20th Century average)
• 76.9°F: Average temperature in July 2012, the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States (3.6°F above the historical average)
• 19: Number of states experiencing a record warm year

Impacts

• 99.1 million: Number of people experiencing 10 or more days that exceeded 100°F in temperature – more than one-third of America’s total population
• 65.5 percent: Area of continental United States experiencing drought during its peak in September
• 11: Number of estimated disasters in 2012 that caused more than $1 billion of losses each.
• 8.5 million: Total number of homes that lost power during Hurricane Sandy
• 300,000: Number of acres burned during the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history
• 350: Number of homes destroyed by Colorado’s Waldo Canyon wildfire, the state’s most destructive wildfire in history
• 19: Number of named storms and hurricanes in 2012 – an above-average amount of tropical cyclone activity

Global Climate Change

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