For the Third Time this Week, Earth Sets an Unofficial Heat Record. What’s behind those Big Numbers?
By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press 11:20 JST, July 8, 2023 Earths average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record and what one prominent scientist says could be the hottest in 120,000 years. But its also a record with some legitimate scientific questions and caveats, so much so that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has distanced itself from it. Its grabbed global attention, even as the number 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degrees Celsius) doesnt look that hot because it averages temperatures from around the globe. Still, scientists say the daily drumbeat of records official or not is a symptom of a larger problem where the precise digits arent as important as whats causing them. Records grab attention, but we need to make sure to connect them with the things that actually matter, climate scientist Friederike Otto of the Imperial College of London said in an email. So I dont think its crucial how official the numbers are, what matters is that they are huge and dangerous and wouldnt have happened without climate change. Thursdays planetary average surpassed the 62.9-degree mark (17.18-degree mark) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maines Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the worlds condition. Until Monday, no day had passed the 17-degree Celsius mark (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the tools 44 years of records. Now, the entire week that ended Thursday averaged that much. Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, called the 63-degree mark an exceptional outlier that is nearly 6 degrees warmer than the average of the last 12,000 years. Rockstrom said it will with high likelihood translate to even more severe extremes in the form of floods, droughts, heat waves and storms. It is certainly plausible that the past couple days and past week were the warmest days globally in 120,000 years, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. He cited a 2021 study that says Earth is the warmest since the last age ended, and said Earth likely hasnt been as warm dating all the way to the ice age before that some 120,000 years ago. Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth temperature monitoring group said he wouldnt be surprised if it is the warmest in 120,000 years. But he said long-term proxy measurements like tree rings arent precise. This weeks average includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) above normal this week. Temperatures were so brutally hot Thursday in Adrar, Algeria, that the temperature never got below 103.3 degrees (39.6 degrees Celsius ) even at night when it is supposed to cool. That was the hottest ever nighttime low for Africa, according to weather historian and climatologist Maximiliano Herrera. The temperature is ramping up across Europe this week, too. Germanys weather agency, DWD, has predicted highs of 37 degrees C (99 degrees F) on Sunday and the Health Ministry has issued a warning to vulnerable people. While there are small spots of cooler-than-normal temperatures across the globe, the University of Maine measurement is an average. That means some places including both polar regions will be extraordinarily warmer than normal and others will be cooler. On average its about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than the 1979-2000 average, which is warmer than the 20th and 19th century averages. And 70% of the world is covered by oceans, which have been spiking record heat for months. Scientists say the heat is driven by two factors: Long-term warming from greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and a natural El Nino warming of part of the Pacific that changes weather globally and makes an already warming world a bit hotter. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued a note of caution about the Maine tools findings, saying it could not confirm data that results in part from computer modeling, saying it wasnt a good substitute for observations. Scientists dont understand and havent delved much into daily fluctuations, said Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. Much more meaningful to them are global data over months, years and especially decades. The fact that we havent had a year colder than the 20th century average since the Ford administration (1976) is much more relevant, Vecchi said. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said immediacy of daily records is important. Tell me that yesterday was the hottest day on record and I can relate the claim to ways in which yesterdays heat constrained my behavior, she said. I cant do the same with monthly or yearly data. ... We experience the world hour-by-hour, day-by-day, not in monthly or yearly averages. Discussions about how official the records are arent as important as the public getting the message that Earth is warming and humans are responsible, said Max Boykoff, a University of Colorado environmental studies professor who tracks media coverage of climate change. The issue of climate change doesnt often get its 15 minutes of fame. When it does, its usually tied to something abstract like a scientific report or a meeting of politicians that most people cant relate to, said George Mason University climate communications professor Ed Maibach. Feeling the heat and breathing the wildfire smoke, as so many of us in the Eastern U.S. and Canada have been doing for the past month is a tangible shared public experience that can be used to focus the public conversation, he said. JN ACCESS RANKING The Japan News / Weekly Edition Our weekly ePaper presents the most noteworthy recent topics in an exciting, readable fomat. Read more 2023 The Japan News - by The Yomiuri Shimbun