Those dog days of August: 3 times the heat by 2050?
August 19, 2009
Scientists at Climate Central have analyzed climate change projections made with global climate models. Scientific literature based on these models anticipates much more frequent occurrences of hot days, “heat waves” and extremely warm summers. Credit: Climate Central / Remik Ziemlenski
If you are wilting under the summer heat, consider this: your child may one day think of summer 2009 as "back in the cool old days." To illustrate expected increases in extreme summer heat, scientists at Climate Central have analyzed climate change projections made with global climate models.
Scientific literature based on these models anticipates much more frequent occurrences of hot days, "heat waves" (very high temperatures sustained over several days), and extremely warm summer seasons. Beyond being uncomfortable, these projected increases in extreme heat will have important societal impacts, including:
- heat stress mortality in humans and livestock;
- increases in peak energy demand;
- crop damage; and
- increased demand for water.
Climate Central's Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Dr. Ben Strauss, emphasizes that the numbers are not predictions. "We're talking about best estimates and averages," says Strauss. "No matter how close the projections turn out to be, some years will have more hot August days, and others will have fewer."
Climate Central is a nonprofit science and media organization created to provide clear and objective information about climate change and its potential solutions. Its work has appeared on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, TIME.com, newsweek.com, Scientific American, grist.org and beyond. Staff scientists drew on regional scenarios from a dozen highly sophisticated computer climate models to compare 1980 and 1990 averages with 2050 projections in three categories:
- Average number of days in August over 90.
- Average number of days in August over 95.
- Average number of days in August over 100.
Worldwide, since 1995, tens of thousands of people have died in heat waves. Other important impacts include increases in demand for energy (particularly electricity for cooling), and increases in urban and agricultural water demand.
The severity of increases in extreme heat and their impacts will depend on the extent of future use of fossil fuels. "We do have some choice here," says Dr. Berrien Moore III, Climate Central's Executive Director. "How hot it will get will depend on the choices we make about energy and transportation in the years to come."
More information: "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands." U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.3 (June 2008). Available at http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/saps/300
Source: Climate Central
Aug 03, 2007 |
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Dec 22, 2009
Over the last few years there has been an overall cooling trend. Just this week we used no cooling whatsoever and the indoor temps never rose to higher than 78°F (25.55555555555556°C).
This lasted for at least three days. Today, the high was 88.6°F (31.44444444444444°C).
I have never experienced an August Summer like that in all the decades I have lived.
Oh, you mean like last year's "freak incident" that was not supposed to be duplicated and the year overall warmer than 2008 predicted by the computer models?
You mean, like the NSIDC predicted ice-free Arctic of 2008 that never happened?
Ummmkaaay... Uhuh....
Solar activity on the Sun has died down and will remain subdued until at least mid 2030's. This means that we will have a 30 year cooling period comparable to the Dalton Minimum from 1790 - 1820.
But don't expect the pseudo-scientists who run this web site to recognise this. They will still be predicting warming when world temperatures reach a minimum in 2030.
Yet another prediction bites the dust! The Sun was supposed to have returned to activity months ago. :)
See: "EARTH'S HEAT SOURCE - THE SUN", in Energy and Environment (SPECIAL ISSUE: Natural drivers of weather and climate) volume 20, numbers 1 & 2, pp. 131-144 (2009)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://myprofile....anuelo09
They have since upgraded the equipment and vent CO2 to the outside but it only functions as a laboratory now rather than a "terraformed" type experiment.
CO2 in the real world, even at the rate in which it is going into the atmosphere, is not going to kill you and it certainly will not turn the earth into another Venus.
Earth does not have enough CO2 in the atmosphere to do that. Even if we burned everything organic on the planet we would not have enough.