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Earth Science

Europe Braces for Sweltering July (esa.int) 98

Temperatures are sizzling across Europe this week amid an intense and prolonged period of heat. And it's only just begun. From a report: Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are all facing a major heatwave with air temperatures expected to climb to 48C on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia -- potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe. An anticyclone -- a high-pressure area -- named Cerberus (named after the monster from Dante's Inferno) coming from the south will cause temperatures to rise above 40C across much of Italy. This comes after a spring and early summer full of storms and floods.

The highest temperature in European history was broken on 11 August 2021, when a temperature of 48.8C was recorded in Floridia, an Italian town in the Sicilian province of Syracuse. That record may be broken again in the coming days. The animation below uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission's radiometer instrument and shows the land surface temperature across Italy between 9 and 10 July. As the image clearly shows, in some cities the surface of the land exceeded 45C, including Rome, Naples, Taranto and Foggia. Along the east slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, many temperatures were recorded as over 50C.

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Europe Braces for Sweltering July

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  • We didn't get no fancy Slashdot post!

  • HUGE increase in sunspots with solar cycle 25, along with CME's that have hit Earth (causing the aurora to be seen in much lower parts of the Earth than typical). When they hit the Earth, they alter weather patterns because they change the magnetic bubble around our planet. But, it's cow farts, jet planes and us burning oil is the problem...so, turn off your AC, eat bugs and be happy while the globalist run all over the planet in their private jets, wine and dine like the fat cats they are.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Sometimes it really does feel like there is a lot of fear mongering going on, especially from my friends. Can you share with me information that shows that CO2 and Methane are not green house gasses and don't have the impacts on climate that many people are claiming? Thanks in advance.

      • Narrator: "But they could not share that data, because it didn't exist "
      • In fact, CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas. Any amount of research will verify that for you. More, the atmospheric sensitivity drops of rapidly.

        The theory is that a slight increase in temperature will cause an increase in water vapor, and H2O is a much more powerful greenhouse gas. The problem with this theory is that water also turns into clouds, which have a high albedo and a net cooling effect.

        tl;dr on CO2: it's mostly BS.

        Which is not to say that humans aren't having a massive impact on the environmen

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @12:40PM (#63686157) Homepage

          In fact, CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas. Any amount of research will verify that for you.

          It is a weak greenhouse gas... but you also need to keep in mind that the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is a small amount. It's about 1 degree K over the last fifty years or so, against a baseline temperature around 300 K.

          More specifically, the atmospheric sensitivity drops of rapidly.

          Greenhouse warming is logarithmic in gas concentration. This has been known for over a century. At the moment, we have not yet even increased CO2 concentration by a factor of two, so we're still in the linear range.

          The theory is that a slight increase in temperature will cause an increase in water vapor, and H2O is a much more powerful greenhouse gas.

          Yes, this has been well studied. The classic paper is Manabe and Wetherald 1967, but there have been many others since.

          The problem with this theory is that water also turns into clouds, which have a high albedo and a net cooling effect.

          This has also been well studied. Clouds stop both incident solar radiation and outgoing IR, so they have both heating and cooling properties. The net result-- and this has been intensively studied for fifty years now-- is that they are a small perturbation.

          tl;dr on CO2: it's mostly BS.

          People who don't understand the science think that, yes. It may have been even a credible argument... twenty years ago. But the evidence is now pretty much overwhelming.

          The bottom line is that we measure the input, we measure the output, we measure the temperature and the models have matched the measured temperature. Manabe and Wetherald were right: Greenhouse gasses are warming the Earth. This may indeed be a small change on an absolute scale, but we are finely adapted to the current global climate, and there will be consequences to changing it.

          • Also the idea that we could spend the last 140 years burning coal, burning oil, burning gas on the scale of billions and billions of tons, made up of material that was sequestered by natural processes that took millions of years and it would no effect on the atmosphere is a leap of logic.

            CO2 is in fact a weak greenhouse gas but we have dumped an enormous amount of it in the air what on a climate timescale is the blink of an eye. On top of that it takes a very very long time for CO2 to naturally dissipate or

          • It may have been even a credible argument... twenty years ago./i
            You mean 120 years ago ...

    • by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @11:22AM (#63685853)

      HUGE increase in sunspots with solar cycle 25, along with CME's that have hit Earth (causing the aurora to be seen in much lower parts
      of the Earth than typical). When they hit the Earth, they alter weather patterns because they change the magnetic bubble around our
      planet.
      But, it's cow farts, jet planes and us burning oil is the problem...so, turn off your AC, eat bugs and be happy while the globalist
      run all over the planet in their private jets, wine and dine like the fat cats they are.

      Have you always been this dumb or is this a recent thing?

    • blah blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @11:37AM (#63685925)

      The great part about physics in general, and the behaviour of the world specifically, is that it's going to do what it will do no matter what you think about the reason. So you can sit there and bitch all you like about how "it's not us", and it won't make the tiniest bit of difference to anybody but yourself. You're pissing in the wind. All of the causal arguments will fall away as unimportant as the climate changes.

      I'm done with the stupidity on all sides of this. I'm just going to laugh as the world gets the final say.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      I'm done trying to convince dolts like you. I'm 50. I have no kids. I am on the way out, and the planet will last the 30ish years I might have left.

      Sucks to be you. And your kids. But I really can't be assed anymore to give a fuck about either.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        I'm done trying to convince dolts like you. I'm 50. I have no kids. I am on the way out, and the planet will last the 30ish years I might have left.

        Sucks to be you. And your kids. But I really can't be assed anymore to give a fuck about either.

        Hear hear!!

        On this we can agree....I plan to live my remaining years in the manner I have until present and I don't see any reason to self sacrifice creature comforts of lifestyle I've enjoyed to date.

    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      HUGE increase in sunspots with solar cycle 25,

      People have been searching for a connection between sunspots and climate for over two hundred years and have consistently failed to find one.

      along with CME's that have hit Earth (causing the aurora to be seen in much lower parts of the Earth than typical). When they hit the Earth, they alter weather patterns because they change the magnetic bubble around our planet.

      ...which has no detectable effect on climate.

      But, it's cow farts, jet planes and us burning oil is the problem...so, turn off your AC, eat bugs and be happy while the globalist run all over the planet in their private jets, wine and dine like the fat cats they are.

      Dismissing the overwhelming evidence supporting the science does not actually make the effect go away. If you disagree with proposed solutions... that's fine, let's see you propose different solutions. But saying "I don't like some of the proposed solutions, therefore I will spread around bullshit saying the science is wrong

    • HUGE increase in sunspots with solar cycle 25

      Hold the fucking phone. *Checks calendar* Is it 2014 again? I thought that bullshit was debated so to death a decade ago that no one would be stupid enough to think of mentioning it again.

      How can you be that ignorant? Like seriously I want to know. I think a blind deaf dumb person with a learning disability at this point knows that sun spots have zero to do with global warming. But here you are in a category all of your own. Do you go to a school where you study the art of looking as stupid as possible? Did

      • Sunspots are not taught in school. Most certainly not their effect on weather (or climate).
        JFYI.

        Ofc. the parent is super dumb, but your argument against him makes no sense either.

  • Cerberus (named after the monster from Dante's Inferno)

    The monster — a three-headed dog — was part of Ancient Greek mythology for thousands of years before Dante. Dante had the classical education, that certain journalists lack...

    Sheesh, maybe, the weather phenomenon is named after a certain invention from MIT [wikipedia.org], huh?..

  • Quote: "[temperatures] climb to 48C on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia -- potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe."

    False. Let's be clear, when they write "recorded" they REALLY mean "recorded using the standard recording process" aka "in the middle of nowhere out of cities, at 1.5m over the ground, in direct sun, at I don't remember what time".

    Now, the TRUTH. We humans DO NOT LIVE THERE, we live in the cities. I've seen the Government thermometer, in summer, under the sun, in the str

    • Now, the TRUTH. We humans DO NOT LIVE THERE, we live in the cities. I've seen the Government thermometer, in summer, under the sun, in the streets of Seville at 55ÂC... which is 7ÂC over the "ever recorded" temperatures of the article.

      The reason they don't use temperatures from cities is because of the heat island effect. All those people and cars and trucks and buses and everything else running, and giving off heat, not to mention the excess heat coming off the blacktop or reflected off concrete

      • > Why would you record temperatures there knowing all that excess heat is around?

        Why wouldn't you? I don't know if it's true for the whole world, but some large parts of the world the majority of people live in cities. I would think it's relevant. And that excess heat that cities produce, well it goes somewhere doesn't?

        • Because they're trying to find what the temperature is exclusive of the excess heat generated by cities. Heat islands for cities only really affect the city and a small area outside the city (heat still radiates outward). However, once you get outside cities the true temperature is what you feel and what is recorded.

          Yes, the heat from cities has to go somewhere, and that certainly is contributing to increasing temperatures, but relying on readings from cities will skew the results because their temperatur

        • Everyone in the world measures air temperature in the shadow.

          And that is what the record temperature is about

          Fucking obviously: he real temperature for a human walking along a road that was heated up since 6h+ and is in plain sun: is 20C aka 60F higher that is a damn no brainer. But the temperature in the sun is not that interesting as it is as it is: the sun heating up the ground. You could bake eggs on the ground since 100 years ... who cares?

          What people care about is that at midnight the temperature is n

      • Because that's the temperatures you actually have to endure.

        If you have a "45 degree heat wave" and people outside of cities read about it, they will bemoan how they always have to deal with 40ish degrees. Not understanding that those 45 degrees actually mean over 50.

    • Oh not this shit again.

    • Great, I got downvoted for saying that TV Weather should say the REAL temperature inside cities (the one people WILL suffer) instead of the "standard middle-of-nowhere" temperature used for temperature tracking, which is 5-10 degrees LOWER!

      They must be someone a "despicable" meteorologist...

  • If it crosses over to the UK, I can fry bacon on my neighbour's car. Always wanted to do that, though I know not why.
    • If it crosses over to the UK, I can fry bacon on my neighbour's car. Always wanted to do that, though I know not why.

      Is it because you're sick of boiled bacon?

  • by Vulch ( 221502 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @11:44AM (#63685957)

    It's been chucking it down with rain here in the UK, and cool enough to think seriously about wearing a coat if you have to go out.

    • It's been chucking it down with rain here in the UK, and cool enough to think seriously about wearing a coat if you have to go out.

      Still rates as a heat wave in the UK, though.

      However, when it does get cold enough that you actually do have to wear that coat, public transport and pensioners will collapse from the cold.

  • by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Friday July 14, 2023 @12:31PM (#63686139) Journal

    The riders are having to double-up on drugs to keep going in this heat.

  • That's crazy. I smoked a nice thick striploin steak with applewood in my kamado joe for lunch today, and 130 was about the internal temperature when it was done.

  • bad time to move to Rome, but oddly, I feel so much healthier here already.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. -- T.H. White

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