Media chases ‘climate intensification’ heatwaves, missing out on data showing them to be less frequent • Increase capacity with that?
Originally posted at ClimateREALITY
Some media are claiming that heat waves in the United States are getting worse this week due to climate change. This is wrong. Actual data from temperature measurements shows that heat waves in the US are declining even as climate change has occurred over the past 75 years.
It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere right now, and it’s no surprise to data-minded people that the weather is hot in many parts of the US – in other words, business is still running as usual during the season. summer. However, the media sees climate change in every heatwave event and seeks to exploit the link, even though it doesn’t exist. For example, last week it was claimed that the world saw its hottest day ever on July 4, with some outlets claiming “the hottest in 100,000 years”. Of course, that’s proven to be ridiculously wrong here Climate realism on both counts.
This week, the media was there again. washington articlesin an article titled, “Heatwaves don’t stop reaching maximum intensity: Weather updates,” say this:
“What is a heat dome? Understand science and how drought and climate change are making them worse.”
Axios, in the article “What this summer’s weather reveals about climate change” written by the always excited Andrew Freedman, remarking,
Tracking the planet’s climate this summer could give one the impression that the climate system — which includes the oceans, atmosphere, ice sheets, and more — has gone astray.
…
Climate studies have warned of an increase in simultaneous heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Then there was “World Socialist Web Site”, with the title: “Record heat wave in US shows growing danger of climate change“
None of the news outlets covering this week’s heatwave were tested or cited historical data about heatwaves, preferring instead to give scary numbers as a combined heat index of temperature and humidity, reprint the opinions of “climate scientists” and refer to Computer models show that climate change is making heat waves worse.
The data does exist, however, for any journalist with a little bit of journalistic curiosity to look up. The point is that the data doesn’t look scary.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains a US heatwave website which contains some very interesting data and maps. Despite claims that climate change makes heat waves worse, data the EPA has compiled since 1948 says completely opposite.
The data is shown in Figure 1, below.
EPA write:
The data comes from thousands of weather stations across the United States. Country patterns can be determined by dividing the country into a grid and examining the data for one station in each grid cell. This method ensures that the results are not biased for areas with many stations in close proximity.
…
[Figure 1] generated by looking at all daily maximum temperatures from 1948 to 2020 and determining 95lame pants percentile temperature (the temperature one would only expect to exceed in 5 days out of 100) at each station. Next, in each year, the total number of days with a maximum temperature higher than 95lame pants percent (i.e. unusually hot days) were determined. The map shows how the total number of unusually hot days per year at each station has changed over time.
The EPA’s data for 1,066 weather stations across the US showing a total of 863 stations, or 81%, reporting a decrease or no change in the number of unusually hot days. By comparison, Only 19 percent of all weather stations reported an increase in the number of unusually hot days since 1948.
Many stations showing hotter temperatures between 1948-2020 were located at airports or badly located locations leading to thermal bias as reported by the study. Climate realism insurance last year, Broken climate stations: US temperature records are still severely flawed. As reported in that study, much of the warming trend occurred at overnight minimum temperatures at these weather stations, allowing them to reach higher-than-expected daytime highs if they weren’t. had a “favorable start” from warmer than expected lows overnight.
In fact, you can see this on the screen using the maximum and minimum data for all weather stations in the US. Figures 2A and 2B below show the maximum and minimum temperatures in the United States since 1948, so that they match the EPA starting data in Figure 1.
In Figure 2A, you can see that the maximum temperature (the type of temperature that would occur during a heat wave) has not changed much since 1948. In fact, there were extreme heat waves in the US in 1954. and 1963 was higher than it is today.
In Figure 2B, you can see that the minimum temperature has increased slowly and steadily since 1948, with peaks over the past 20 years (warmer nights) higher than values in the 1940s and 1950s.
Finally, another chart from the EPA shows that the heatwave was actually the worst for the United States in the 1930s, before climate change became a blip on the media’s radar. See Figure 3.
The bottom line is: despite what the media says, real-world data shows heatwaves are NOT getting worse in the US due to climate change. This is in contrast to the opinions of climate scientists cited in the mainstream media that seem to be tied to the narrative that climate change is causing the crisis, despite the data. whether the opposite.
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 forecasts. He has created graphical weather display systems for television, specialized weather instruments, as well as co-authored articles on climate issues. He runs the world’s most viewed website on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Learn more about heat and temperature at EverythingThingClimate.com
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