So, this is currently happening in the western US (hopefully I’ve linked it properly so it will embed):
Summer. In March.
Quite possibly the most absurd example of climate change we’ve seen to date. Daily and monthly records are not just being broken, they are being shattered by multiple degrees. Some of these places are setting records for April! A select few for June!!
And this heat wave could last for weeks!!!
Seriously though, is anyone else as shocked about this as I am?
Here in Colorado Springs, CO at just over 6k elevation, it was 82F today. Normally we’d still be expecting one good snow storm before the end of the month, or even into April (once common, rather rare in the last 5-10 years).
Snowcap is far lower than we need it to be if we’re not going to burn down all summer.
Extended outlook forecast:
We’re tracking multiple days of record warmth from Thursday to Saturday - all three days with highs in the 80s in Colorado Springs. The warmest ever high in Colorado Springs in March is 81, set in 1971. We’re likely to break that record both Friday and Saturday. Saturday’s highs in the mid 80s would smash that record.
Tomorrow is ALSO supposed to be 82 by my weather app, Friday 87, and Saturday 93! Yeah, terrifying.
Sunday at least it’ll drop back to a much more seasonable high of 68F, but that just shows how far out of the norm current temps are. And even so, it is expected to be back to 87F next week (grain of salt given a 7 day forecast but by the FSM we’re screwed).
I live in the greater Miami metroblob. The last few days have been 15-20 degrees colder than typical. We are back in the dead of winter. And overcast, gray, drippy, and miserable. our norm now is 80 & unremitting sunny. Instead we have 3 days of 60 & drizzle. F*** that noise.
My point is not to poke fun at climate change. As you saw in the other thread, I’m a total believer.
But it is inaccurate and unscientific to talk about any given week’s or month’s weather as being caused by climate change.
We’re talking about things in the 0th percentile and multiple standard deviations outside of normal. Almost literally impossible without climate change.
But yes, there is a 1 in (some ridiculously big number) chance that it has nothing to do with climate change I suppose.
edit: In general though, you are absolutely correct. Any particular phenomena is quite hard to link to climate change even weakly. We can say that hurricanes are likely wetter due to climate change, but cannot say “Hurricane X dumped Y more inches on Z because of climate change”.
That’s (another) part of what’s so startling about this heat wave. It is so directly and obviously attributable.
I guess I don’t really understand your point. Unless your point is “maybe we can never truly know anything”.
Yes attribution is hard, but quantitatively there must exist a cutoff beyond which something is so much of an outlier that it’s effectively impossible without an external forcing. To say that we cannot draw any conclusions at that point about the relationship between the outlier and the forcing is asinine.
This particular heat wave is such an outlier and climate change is the forcing.
I think @LSLGuy (and I’m sure they’ll correct me when I’m inevitably wrong) is being careful to explain that climate change particulars are very rarely tied to a specific event, or direct causal line. And that especially for deniers, they’ll use such reasoning as evidence that it has to be wrong.
So for example, using LSLGuy’s example, a denier would say “Well it’s 20 degrees colder than average here in Miami, so it can’t be Global Warming! Fake news!”
So we tend to be very careful in feeding the deniers by making sweeping statements.
Nope, @LSLGuy guy is right. Short-term weather phenomena like heat waves are always probabilistic. And in fact, regional weather changes on annualized scales are also probabilistic. You typically have to go to large-scale or global multi-year temperature changes to see a meaningful signature of climate change.
The proper role of statistical attribution here is to say that climate models predict an increasing frequency of extreme weather in many regions, so this kind of heat wave is consistent with that prediction and typical of the kinds of changes we can expect with advancing climate change – such as increased frequency of record high temperatures – but it’s unscientific and wrong to attribute any particular event to climate change. The proximate cause of this heat wave is a large slow-moving high-pressure system that’s creating a heat dome. That’s all we can and should say.
It’s also incorrect to say that “climate change is the forcing” behind this heat wave as that further muddies the issue. “Climate forcing” is a term in climate science that refers to a long-term imbalance in the radiative energy flowing through the atmosphere, such as increased absorption and re-emission by CO2 of long-wave energy rising from the earth. It has nothing to do with weather events.
I live in the northern ID/WA border part of the pacific NW, and there are parts not very south of us that are expecting record breaking temps. I know this because I am looking to go on a camping/hiking excursion. The problem is the high temps are bring extreme winds with it. It is very odd to see 77 degree weather in March. Very fucking odd.
Yesterday it was 91 degrees here on the California coast, which was exceptionally out of the ordinary. The highest temperature ever recorded here, on any date in any year, was 94.
It was 92 here a few miles south of San Jose. It’s still frickin’ winter, and it’s 92 degrees. It won’t cool off until Saturday at the earliest. It’s awful.
Is the quibble with the causal language? Would you prefer “worsened by (some degree that we’ll get to read about in a couple weeks when they publish an attribution statement for this heat wave) without which this almost certainly would not have broken records”?
As you point out, you’re new here. And trust me, by the dozenth time one of our posters (possibly including myself!) reply with “Well, technically…” followed by a half dozen paragraphs of pedantic needling on one unqualified assertation… you’ll either or provide at least some acknowledgement of the assumptions that underly the discussion.
We’re weird that way.
And again, note what @LSLGuy did - they pointed out the possible counter arguments as used by deniers and made it clear that it did NOT reflect their POV.
We can be an angry mob in the most erudite way at times.
Amateur meteorologist and lifelong weather nerd here.
Exactly this.
It’s difficult (probably impossible) to prove that a particular extreme weather event (the current heat wave out west, the huge blizzard that just hit Wisconsin, etc.) is caused by climate change. Extreme events happen, and they happened 50 and 100 years ago, too.
But the fact that such extreme weather is becoming more common, and more extreme, is a trend, and very likely is a sign of climate change.
I expect nothing less. It’s why I started posting here in the just place actually. I just disagree with y’all in this particular instance.
Anytime the scientific content I consume, from respectable professionals that are generally very precise in their communications, starts using adjectives like “eye-popping”, “mind boggling” and “truly astonishing” it’s time to pay closer attention to what’s going on.
edit: why didn’t that show up as a reply to @ParallelLines?
Ah, I’d definitely noticed it removing the whole post quotes. Took me awhile to figure out how to quote at all. Didn’t realize it did the same for reply if I started typing it as the next post (ever though I took long enough that someone else posted in between).
Algain, no, it absolutely IS true and you’ve had it explained to you at least three times.
The first CNN article is quite old and I haven’t seen the paper it references, but I’m certain that this is also a statistical study, because they all are. The second CNN article I saw earlier, and the “climate change-linked heat wave” scare headline is just plain bad journalism – no surprise as it’s CNN.
As for the four papers you cited from Nature, look at them more carefully. The first one describes it as a “protocol for probabilistic extreme event attribution” right in the title! The second one references “A statistical framework for conditional extreme event attribution”. The third one discusses a statistical tool called ClimaMeter, The fourth one talks about. “Climate change detection and attribution (D&A)”, noting that “D&A fits within the broader field of causal inference, the collection of statistical methods that identify cause and effect relationships”.
In short, none of your cited science sources support your incorrect contention, only the usual bad journalism from CNN.
“All” the scientists? So far I’ve seen zero, and your citations are misleading.
What is your issue with statistical studies precisely? Why are we dying on this hill?
An entire sub-branch of scientific study related to climate change and extreme weather uses this terminology to attribute impacts from climate change to specific events.
It’s good enough for Nature but not for the forum??
Y’all seem very smart, so I’m sure the error is somewhere in my communication, but I’m legitimately confused why this is contentious.
or provide at least some acknowledgement of the assumptions that underly the discussion.