False, Old Media, Climate Change Doesn’t Cause Summer Heatwaves in US and Europe – Rise to That?

Originally posted at ClimateREALITY

Last week, both the US and Europe experienced significant localized heat waves. The region in Europe has been particularly frustrating for the media, as the region is not prepared for temperatures exceeding 100°F like parts of the United States in places like California, Texas, and Oklahoma, where it is common frequent use of air conditioners. experience. The mainstream media has unanimously blamed man-made heat waves for climate change. This allocation is wrong.

The titles were really vague, and completely false. For example:

With record heat, Europe will see its climate future [Scientific American]

Climate change is killing people’: Extreme heatwave in Europe continues [EuroNews]

‘Climate change affects everyone’: Europe battles bushfires in intense heat [Reuters]

And in the United States, the media hype is just as wild and untrue:

Record heat waves in the US and Europe prove climate change has arrived, experts say [Yahoo News]

The climate crisis is fueling heatwaves and wildfires. This is the way [CNN]

How Texas’ Heat Dome Is Related to Climate Change [Yahoo News]

Every summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it gets hot; that’s what summer does. In addition, every year, a localized heatwave occurs somewhere in the world.

The error common to all of these articles is the fact that The weather is not the climate.

Weather is an event that can last from a few minutes to several days. A heat wave is a weather event that is often associated with large-scale weather patterns, such as high-pressure umbrellas that can create heat domes in the summer. Climate is the average weather over a period of thirty years such as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. Note my highlights:

Every story that tries to link climate change to a heatwave does so without any proof. They are nothing more than fear speculation.

And, it’s not just limited to print media and the Internet, broadcasters are also overusing it to the point of making it seem like a crisis with the use of color. Figure 1 is a comparison of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) TV graphics in Summer 2012 versus Summer 2022.

Note that in 2012 some of the temperatures were actually higher and they didn’t need to color the areas red to make it look worse than it really is.

Another thing you won’t find on the BBC in the press/Internet media is the fact that while record temperatures are underway in Western Europe, Eastern Europe is experiencing below-average temperatures. Figure 2 below shows the difference in temperature in the UK and Europe compared to the lower-than-normal temperatures in Eastern Europe that the press missed.

The significant regional temperature difference seen in Figure 2 is a sure sign that this is a weather pattern, not global-scale climate change aka global warming. as the media still believe. The same applies to the heat wave in the US as shown in Figure 3. It is regional in its scope, not global.

As reported in Climate at a glance: US Heatwaves,

… In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been much less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.

All-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.

The 1936 heat wave was much worse. To their credit, washington articles got it right in this report:

The murderous US heat wave of 1936 spread as far north as Canada, resulting in heat-related deaths of an estimated 5,000 people, sending thermometers to a record 121 degrees Fahrenheit in Steele, ND, and causing May Seven becomes warmest month ever recorded in the United States.

But the real problem is that the prolonged high temperatures experienced by the US and Europe this month happened before climate change became a common cause. It only takes a small amount of research to uncover these facts.

For example, a search of the term heatwave on Wikipedia shows that the heatwave and drought of 1540 in Europe lasted for 11 months, and the heatwave of 1757 was the hottest in 500 years until 2003. . Besides, Netweather Community TV, known as the 1906 heatwave in the UK during August and September, “one of the most exceptional heatwaves ever to occur in the UK.” A 1911 heatwave in France contributed to more than 41,000 premature deaths. More recently, in Europe, there was a massive, months-long heat wave in 1976. This happened at a time when the Earth was experiencing a 30-year cooling trend, prompting many scientists to warn The next ice age is looming. Wikipedia’s entrance on the 1976 event reports:

The summer of 1976 is considered the hottest summer in Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, during the 20th century. An area of ​​great high pressure dominated much of Europe during all summer months. . The pressure system was moved into place at the end of May 1976 and remained until the first traces of rain were recorded on August 27.

. . .

Over the entire period, much of Europe was continuously sunbathing while the UK had an average of more than 14 hours of sunshine per day. 1976 was dubbed the “year of ladybugs” in that country due to the massive increase in insect populations due to a prolonged period of heat. In the United Kingdom, summer coincides with a 16-week dry spell, the longest recorded over England and Wales since 1727.

That high-pressure pattern closely resembles what is seen in Britain and Europe today. The difference is that today’s media immediately blames climate change rather than weather patterns, and in this case this paragraph In The New York Timesthey even try to convince you that the comparison between the hot summer of 1976 and 2022 is somehow “false”.

“However, the comparison with 1976 is misleading. The highest temperature recorded then was 35.9 degrees Celsius, while on Tuesday it passed 40 degrees.

BBC report:

“Thermometers hit 40.3 degrees Celsius at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, while another 33 locations have surpassed the UK’s previous highest temperature of 38.7 degrees Celsius, set in 2019.”

What’s BBC and NYT do not tells you that a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) located at a Royal Air Force (RAF) base next to the sea absorbs the heat of the runway and airstrip. Figure 4 shows the hourly temperature for that day and where it was recorded.

Opposite, BBC report “…the [previous] the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was 101.7 degrees, observed in Cambridge [at Cambridge University Botanic Garden] in July 2019.”

The Botanical Garden is a completely different environment from the RAF airbase. Much warmer is expected in the latter due to the absence of shade, the presence of heat-absorbing materials and the hot air escaping from the jet engines. So the NYT’s “misleading” statement is really about the lack of solid press coverage of the environment in which these temperatures were recorded.

Everyone knows that Urban heat island effect (UHI) could contribute to warmer high temperatures, and since the UK has gone from 56 million people in 1976 to 67 million people in 2020Unsurprisingly, UHI grew as the infrastructure supporting an additional 11 million people was added to that island nation.

The last word comes from meteorologist Cliff Mass, PhD, who has Thorough analysis of short-term heatwave event and write (his emphasis):

Facts and overwhelming scientific evidence provide another story: The recent heatwave in Europe was mainly the result of natural processes but was modestly enhanced by human-caused global warming.

The situation is very similar [Pacific] The Northwest Heatwave of last summer; with many of the same elements.

…

The bottom line is that the recent heatwave in Europe was caused by an amplification of the northern wave pattern, with global warming perhaps contributing 5-10% of the warmth. The natural variability of the atmosphere is the closest cause of warming and not an existential threat to the population of Europe.

Obviously, there’s no reason to be alarmed, no matter what the media says. But the media won’t tell you any of that, because it spoils their story about being able to blame the heatwave on climate change, while hoping you didn’t notice the difference. distort their truth about the normal weather events we see every summer.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front and behind the camera as an online broadcast meteorologist since 1978, and now does daily radio forecasting. He has created graphical weather presentation systems for television, specialized weather instruments, as well as co-authored reviews of climate issues. He runs the world’s most viewed website on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.