228

A heat wave that has stifled the southern tier of the U.S. for weeks has expanded into the Plains, Midwest and now the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday, triggering heat alerts for over 227 million people, according to the National Weather Service.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] IHeartBadCode@kbin.social 71 points 1 year ago

"It's 1°C. That's not a lot."

It's 1°C on average. That means every molecule of air has AT LEAST 1°C extra thermal energy. And I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, there's a lot of air molecules. So while taking one cubic centimeter of air and increasing it by 1°C isn't a ton of energy. Do that for roughly all 109 tredecitillion molecules and you get about 2.2 zettajoules of energy. Annual US energy consumption is just 0.094 zettajoules. So one degree increase is equal to more energy than the US uses in 23½ years. The biggest nuclear bomb humans ever made, that pulls in at about 0.00021 zettajoules. So one degree is roughly 10,500 Tasr Bombas going off and then the resulting heat just never leaving.

All of that energy. It has to go somewhere. Sometimes it makes ice turn to water, sometimes it increases the speed at which some wind is moving, sometimes it increases the surface temperature of land, sometimes it evaporates water leaving an area very dry. But it has to go somewhere. And it cannot just radiate back out into space, it hits a CO₂ molecule, bounces off of it, and flies right back down to Earth. And the more CO₂ molecules we put out there, the more often that happens.

[-] FlickOfTheBean@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

Huh this is the first thing I've read that puts it into a sort of understandable perspective (eternally recovering from my conservative raised childhood, maybe sane people explain it better in general)

[-] tryptaminev@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you want a feeling for how your local temperatures will change you can extrapolate the peaks linearly. So if we look at London Uk as an Example https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/0394/production/_125961900_optimised-max_temp_uk-nc-002.png.webp

With a global mean temperature increase of 1 C since 1970 there was an increase in peak temperatures (avg) of about 2 C. So till 2050 it will be somewhere around 3 C for the average peak in summer. If we look at the ramp up since 2008 we can expect more like 5-6 C higher temperature records than today. So in the 2050s there will be some summers with 45 C records and the average hottest day every year around 35-37 C

Edit: and not to forget that this is only talking about how high the peaks every year are. The length of heatwaves will also increase by a few days. So where it was maybe 32 for three days and then 35 for one day, followed by a cooling thunderstorm it will be more like five days of 35 followed by a day of 37 and then a much more intense thunderstorm than what we know today.

[-] Lakija@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Who! This is the first time someone explain this shit to me! 🤯 Like actually explained it so it makes sense.

Thank you!

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Whoa. I've never had this explained so clearly. Thanks. Also yikes.

[-] AlecSadler@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Love this explanation. Thanks much. Sharing...

[-] NegativeCool@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is an amazing explanation.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
228 points (98.7% liked)

News

23265 readers
3581 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS