Too Hot

🥵 When it gets too hot....

 

Heat Stress in U.S. May Double

Earth is now trapping an ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, NASA says

New research shows that the amount of heat the planet traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/16/earth-heat-imbalance-warming/

The amount of heat Earth traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land, according to new research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented,” said Norman Loeb, a NASA scientist and lead author of the study, which was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The Earth is warming faster than expected.”

Using satellite data, researchers measured what is known as Earth’s energy imbalance — the difference between how much energy the planet absorbs from the sun, and how much it’s able to shed, or radiate back out into space.

When there is a positive imbalance — Earth absorbing more heat than it is losing — it is a first step toward global warming, said Stuart Evans, a climate scientist at the University at Buffalo. “It’s a sign the Earth is gaining energy.”

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From Clearwater, Florida, May 2021

GreenPolicy360 Siterunner/SJS:

Trendlines, we are looking at trendlines today. Data, the data changing as time passes. We need to step back and have perspective. We need to look closely, to 'drill down' and see with detail. Measure-to-Manage NASA says, science advises, GreenPolicy360 recommends as a guide.

GreenPolicy360 believes in personal responsibility to manage wisely. We are planet citizens and earth is in human hands. Together we are guiding our planet home into the future. We are delivering a legacy to future generations.

Join planet citizens who are monitoring our Earth's 'Vital Signs'.

One of GreenPolicy360's great concerns is climate change, as all our readers and sharers know. A recent study of a 'new normal' caught our attention today, a global study and national breakout of data changing over time. And as we are looking at this 'new normal' data, a century of temperatures, we cannot help but think what will happen if the temperature increases continue, a trendline into the future, up and up into the 'unliveable... uninhabitable' temperatures range. 'Cooling technology' will be required and being outdoors will be limited...

Let's look more closely.

Let's look at a recent feature news 'wrap up' from a science reporter for the Associated Press.

Here, look.... recognize the threats. Act planet citizens, act ....

Via the Washington Post

Record heat bakes Middle East as temperatures top 125 degrees

It has been called ‘the harshest heat wave in history for this time of the year’

June 9, 2021

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/07/record-june-heat-wave-middle-east/

Via the Boston Globe

Ninety degree days occurring earlier and more often. A rising toll of health effects

What does this say about climate change?

June 7, 2021

• https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/06/07/metro/its-hot-out-is-this-climate-change/

Via the Associated Press

Billions projected to suffer nearly unlivable heat in 2070

By Seth Borenstein

May 4, 2020

• https://apnews.com/article/asia-pacific-ap-top-news-climate-change-pollution-science-bdcdb1e537c2f23becb3960fbd4a8ed8

(AP) — In just 50 years, 2 billion to 3.5 billion people, mostly the poor who can’t afford air conditioning, will be living in a climate that historically has been too hot to handle, a new study said.

With every 1.8 degree (1 degree Celsius) increase in global average annual temperature from man-made climate change, about a billion or so people will end up in areas too warm day-in, day-out to be habitable without cooling technology, according to ecologist Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

'How many people will end up at risk depends on how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions are reduced and how fast the world population grows.

Under the worst-case scenarios for population growth and for carbon pollution — which many climate scientists say is looking less likely these days — the study in Monday’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts about 3.5 billion people will live in extremely hot areas. That’s a third of the projected 2070 population.

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GreenPolicy360 / Reporting from our terrestrial home base, Clearwater, Florida, USA:

As just one of multiple examples of what's coming with climate change and global warming, life in Florida, USA is going to be a quite a different experience in the not too distant future. Semi-tropical will become tropical. Then there's the water... not to cool off, but to deal with the consequences of heat...

Florida 13,576 km coastline is at the frontlines of global sea-level rise. Florida is, as few realize is also 'on top of water', situated on a peninsula of 'karst', an ancient seabed of porous limestone. Above the underground water exchange of fresh-and-seawater is a political brew. Florida today, unfortunately, has become chock full of climate-change denying politicos. The state's former governor, now a US Senator, denies climate change is a serious problem, closing his eyes and ears to policy preparation and action as he was reported forbidding state government officials from even using the term 'climate change' .... Florida's following governor, fortunately, is not as extreme in his views and signed a first-ever piece of legislation to establish a state climate-related resiliency program. So there... as of May 2021, signs of environmental protection and progress in the so-called "Sunshine State".

GreenPolicy360 will continue to do what we can to push Florida to become forward-looking. Perhaps a quick look at sea-level rise would be a place to start the new "Too Hot" GreenPolicy360 page.

-- SJS / May 13, 2021

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Sea-Level_Rise

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_News

May 2021

Miami gets a "Chief Heat Officer"

by Craig Pittman / Via the Washington Post

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/05/12/climate-urban-heat-miami/

Jane Gilbert, the city’s new chief heat officer, says she will put together a task force of experts to address the problem

Last June, Miami reported its hottest temperatures on record. The daytime sun was brutal and there was little respite even at night. Dozens of heat-related deaths were reported that year.

As the Earth warms, the city by the ocean says its heat problem is poised to become even deadlier.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava (D) recently announced the county was creating a first-of-its-kind position — chief heat officer.

“We know extreme heat does not impact people equally — poorer communities and Black and Hispanic people bear the brunt of the public health impacts,” the mayor said in a statement. A chief heat officer will “coordinate our efforts to protect people from heat and save lives.”

Q: But heat is such a fact of life in Miami. What makes that deserving of a chief officer?

A: Miami knows heat — we’re hot and humid a good part of the year. A heat index of 105 degrees is about when you’ve hit dangerous levels, when people could really suffer from heatstroke.

We currently have an average of seven days where we get over that heat index for a couple of hours. By mid-century, we’re going to have 88 of those days — that’s more than 10 times as many days....

Q: How can you answer someone who challenges the existence of climate change?

A: We don’t have many of them in Miami-Dade County.

I’ve felt the change in the heat in the 26 years I’ve been here. It’s hard to argue that heat can’t be a risk when you’ve seen people die. It’s the number one climate- and weather-related killer in the United States.

Read Craig's Full Interview with Jane Gilbert

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NOAA's "new normal" climate report is anything but normal

By Jeff Berardelli

May 8, 2021 / 7:11 AM / CBS News

• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-new-normal-temperature-noaa/

It doesn't take a climate scientist to see the changes that have occurred. In the maps below, using NOAA data, Climate Central illustrates the warmer temperatures the U.S. has experienced. When comparing the latest "normals" to what used to be normal a century ago, the difference is clear — seen in red from coast to coast...

Some climate scientists, like Michael Mann of Penn State, don't love the system of reporting new normals. As he told The Associated Press, Mann prefers using a constant baseline because updating what is normal for present-day conditions obscures the long-term warming trend and makes the warming due to climate change seem less significant. "Adjusting normal every 10 years perverts the meaning of 'normal' and 'normalizes' away climate change."

US Climate Normals

The U.S. Climate Normals are a large suite of data products that provide information about typical climate conditions for thousands of locations across the United States. Normals act both as a ruler to compare today’s weather and tomorrow’s forecast, and as a predictor of conditions in the near future. The official normals are calculated for a uniform 30 year period, and consist of annual/seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly averages and statistics of temperature, precipitation, and other climatological variables from almost 15,000 U.S. weather stations.

National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) generates the official U.S. normals every 10 years in keeping with the needs of our user community and the requirements of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and National Weather Service (NWS). The 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals are the latest in a series of decadal normals first produced in the 1950s. These data allow travelers to pack the right clothes, farmers to plant the best crop varieties, and utilities to plan for seasonal energy usage. Many other important economic decisions that are made beyond the predictive range of standard weather forecasts are either based on or influenced by climate normals.

• https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/us-climate-normals

* https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/about

🌎

Future of the Human Climate Niche

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.

May 26, 2020

Significance

We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.

Abstract

All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for millennia, human populations have resided in the same narrow part of the climatic envelope available on the globe, characterized by a major mode around ∼11 °C to 15 °C mean annual temperature (MAT). Supporting the fundamental nature of this temperature niche, current production of crops and livestock is largely limited to the same conditions, and the same optimum has been found for agricultural and nonagricultural economic output of countries through analyses of year-to-year variation. We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 y than it has moved since 6000 BP. Populations will not simply track the shifting climate, as adaptation in situ may address some of the challenges, and many other factors affect decisions to migrate. Nevertheless, in the absence of migration, one third of the global population is projected to experience a MAT >29 °C currently found in only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara. As the potentially most affected regions are among the poorest in the world, where adaptive capacity is low, enhancing human development in those areas should be a priority alongside climate mitigation.

• https://www.pnas.org/content/117/21/11350

April 2021

Heat Stress (HS) in Earth's Future

• https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EF001886

• https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/23284277

Fastest Warming Cities and States in the U.S.

2019

• https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-american-warming-us-heats-up-earth-day

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