Tag: Heat wave

In France, The Government Tries To Prevent The People From Getting Air Conditioning

A remarkable feature of governments in Europe is the extent to which they operate explicitly against the interest of their citizens and voters. They give an outward appearance of being democracies, and they hold regular elections, but somehow the people in power are a self-perpetuating political clique that, from all evidence, seems to hold the ordinary working people and voters in complete contempt.

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

A remarkable feature of governments in Europe is the extent to which they operate explicitly against the interest of their citizens and voters. They give an outward appearance of being democracies, and they hold regular elections, but somehow the people in power are a self-perpetuating political clique that, from all evidence, seems to hold the ordinary working people and voters in complete contempt. Prime examples of operating against the interests of the people include: opening the borders to millions of impoverished migrants who hate the host countries; and imposing a fantasy “energy transition” that drives up the cost of energy and destroys industrial jobs without any measurable effect on the climate.

A new example of the hatred of the governing class for the ordinary people has emerged in the past couple of weeks. You have probably read about the major heat wave that has swept across Europe, affecting all the major countries: UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and others. On Wednesday June 24, France allegedly had its hottest day ever on record. Here is a map from CNN showing high temperatures forecast early that day:

Whether or not the temperature that day actually reached 105 in Paris or 109 in Bordeaux, it was objectively very hot. Meanwhile, American readers may be shocked to learn that the large majority of residences in France do not have air conditioning. A source called hellowatt.fr here says that as of early 2026 only 27.4% of houses and 12.6% of apartments in France had air conditioning. (In the U.S., the figure for all residences exceeds 90%.). So the large majority of the French people were left to swelter through the heat wave. Thousands of schools were also forced to close.

As you might imagine, the experience of the heat wave has set off a debate in France as to whether air conditioning should be more widely adopted. I happen to be in France at the moment (on a family vacation) and picked up a copy of the Sunday edition of one of the national newspapers, Le Figaro. Its entire front page is devoted to the air conditioning controversy. (It’s mostly behind paywall. Here is a link to read the first several paragraphs (in French).).

Figaro commissioned a polling organization called Odoxa-Backbone to survey attitudes of the French toward expanding access to air conditioning. Excerpt (my translation):

The French favor a grand plan for air conditioning. 8 of 10 assert that residences, schools, hospitals, and public transport should be so equipped. . . . The large majority favoring generalization of air conditioning includes even 78% of Green Party militants. . . .

Well, that’s what the people think. But how about the members of the political clique that run the place? France currently has a supposedly “center right” government, with President Emanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. One of the Ministers (equivalent to our cabinet secretaries) is the Minister of Ecological Transition, one Monique Barbut. Barbut is definitely not on board with letting the peasants have air conditioning. Figaro includes some extensive quotes from Barbut:

She says of herself that she is “horrified by people who tell her that all we need to do is put air conditioning everywhere.” For her, “it’s not a question of adaptation, but rather a measure that is appropriate only for an emergency.” . . . Barbut added, as what she thought was the definitive argument, that air conditioning would not “avoid any forest fires.”

Figaro includes its own editorial in its front page spread. Excerpt:

[Barbut] is an activist disguised as a Minister. . . . Barbut’s words are neither scientific nor ecological; they are religious. For her as for the other fanatics who confound care of the world with their own ideological agenda, the unquestioned climatic heating is not a phenomenon to which societies should adapt, but rather a punishment that we must collectively accept. . . . For them it is a question of atoning for our sins. . . . For such people to have a place in our Council of Ministers is a grave political mistake.

Meanwhile, the anti-immigration party called Rassemblement National has spotted an obvious opening. That party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, has recently called for a “major plan” to generalize air conditioning throughout the country. On the other side of the aisle, the most prominent leader of the Left in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was quoted by Le Monde on June 20, “We must absolutely not install air conditioning everywhere; that would only make things worse.”

Somehow the Left has gone from being the advocate of the working class, to seeking to punish the working class. Why, I cannot explain.

Here in the U.S., between May and September 2024, Phoenix, Arizona, had a streak of more than one hundred days in a row where the temperature went over 100 degrees every day. That city could barely exist without universal air conditioning. The same applies for all the big cities in Texas, Florida, and plenty of other states. I wonder how Barbut or Mélenchon would seek to punish the people who live in those places.

No, WHYY, a Heat Wave Is Not a ‘Fingerprint of Climate Change’

Observational data from NOAA and peer-reviewed analyses show U.S. heat wave frequency and intensity peaked in the 1930s — long before post-1950s CO₂ rise accelerated. The 1934 and 1936 summers stand out for extreme hot day counts, with the decade recording the highest frequency of very hot days over much of North America. Many all-time state and city highs (including in the central and eastern U.S.) were set then and still hold. Extended heat waves were more common in that era than in the 21st century so far.

WHYY’s Climate Desk piece (April 14–15, 2026) claimed an early April heat wave threatening Philadelphia records carried the clear “fingerprint of climate change.”

It quoted Climate Central’s Jen Brady asserting the event had that imprint, with their Climate Shift Index (CSI) tool declaring such temperatures “twice as likely” in Philly and 3–5 times more likely in parts of southern New Jersey/Delaware due to human-caused warming.

Forecast highs pushed into the low-to-mid 90s°F, potentially breaking the April 15 record of 88°F (set in 1941) or tying earlier marks.

This framing is misleading.

A short-term weather event driven by a persistent high-pressure ridge and warm air advection is weather, not long-term climate.

Conflating the two to imply causation or unprecedented crisis misrepresents both the science and the data.

Observational data from NOAA and peer-reviewed analyses show U.S. heat wave frequency and intensity peaked in the 1930s — long before post-1950s CO₂ rise accelerated.

The 1934 and 1936 summers stand out for extreme hot day counts, with the decade recording the highest frequency of very hot days over much of North America.

Many all-time state and city highs (including in the central and eastern U.S.) were set then and still hold. Extended heat waves were more common in that era than in the 21st century so far.

The most accurate modern U.S. temperature network (USCRN, deployed around 2005) shows no sustained rise in daily high temperatures nationwide since its inception.

Broader trends since the 1950s, when properly contextualized against the 1930s baseline, reveal mixed or modest changes in heat wave metrics — not a dramatic escalation.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article from the climate desk at Philadelphia’s WHYY News titled “‘Fingerprint of climate change’: April heat wave could break a record in Philadelphia,” claims that warm temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic this week are evidence of long term global warming. This is false. While it is true that average, long term global temperatures have modestly increased since the Industrial Revolution, heatwaves like those forecasted for the East coast are not evidence of any emergency, and also are not becoming more frequent or severe.

A high-pressure ridge in the Atlantic Ocean is causing warmer air to sweep up the Southeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic, giving the region a springtime heatwave. That’s a short-term meteorological event, which is normally referred to as weather, not a long-term change in the average temperature and prevailing conditions for a region, which is climate.

WHYY News says “climate analysts say these hot temperatures fit into a trend of warming spring weather,” quoting a researcher at the climate action advocacy group, Climate Central, saying the heatwave has “a fingerprint of climate change,” as proof.

It is true that some data indicate that spring weather conditions are arriving a few days earlier in recent years than they did a hundred-plus years ago in some locations. However, this does not mean that severe spikes in temperature are the drivers of those changes. In fact, it is less severe cold driving the trend, not more severe warmth.

For example, the article and Climate Central point to Philadelphia as an example of one of the regions expected to see unseasonal warmth this spring, saying “since 1970, Philadelphia’s average spring temperatures have risen roughly 3 degrees, according to Climate Central.”

They say that climate change is what “makes this week’s high temperatures in Philadelphia twice as likely, according to the organization’s Climate Shift Index, which uses models to compare today’s world to a world without human-caused carbon pollution.”

There are major flaws in this reasoning, and bad science.

Data show that temperatures for Pennsylvania have only increased on average by around 2 °F since 1900, meaning that Philadelphia’s 3 ° F of warming since 1970 (if we assume Climate Central is correct) is higher over the past half-century than the average for the state as a whole over the past 125 years. This is actually not at all a surprise, but it has nothing at all to do at all with “human-caused carbon pollution.” The higher warming rate in a city like Philadelphia, like with other highly urbanized regions around the country, has everything do with increased population density and associated development producing the urban heat island effect. This effect was recently described by both an analysis of urban temperature stations in extremely hot places like Reno, Nevada by meteorologist Anthony Watts, as well as broader, summertime satellite-based measurement of temperatures by Dr. Roy Spencer, who found from 1895 to 2023:

[f]or the average “suburban” (100-1,000 persons per sq. km) station, UHI is 52% of the calculated temperature trend, and 67% of the urban station trend (>1,000 persons per sq. km). This means warming has been exaggerated by at least a factor of 2 (100%).

This analysis was for summertime temperatures, but what’s true of summer is true of spring because the built-up, heat retaining environment is the same.

Additionally, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) state climate summaries show that heat spikes are not getting more common. Rather, the long-term slight rise in temperatures is due to days and nights with extremely low temperatures becoming less common, and nighttime temperatures (which are particularly influenced by UHI) are modestly warmer than they were a few decades ago.

Figure 1: “Very cold nights” from 1900-2020, from NOAA state summary for Pennsylvania: https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/pa/

In fact, data indicate that instances of extreme warmth are actually less prevalent today than they were in the mid-1900s:

Figure 2: “Very hot days” from 1900-2020, from NOAA state summary for Pennsylvania: https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/pa/

Climate Central and WHYY News fail to reference any real-world data, opting instead to simply assert without providing proof that it is warming in general. Instead, they point people to an attribution study that compares two models of the world—both fictional, both loaded with assumptions on the part of the researchers and other climate scientists—in order to prove climate change is causing heat waves. Models are not data, and, as such, attribution studies don’t provide evidence of warming. Climate Realism has discussed many times why it is invalid to use a model that assumes what it is setting out to prove; that climate change is responsible for any given weather event. Base models, which these attribution studies rely on, have failed to accurately predict real-world temperature change, and the vast majority of supposed extreme weather trends they predict have failed to materialize.

Just as a single month’s unusual cold is not proof that the planet is cooling, a single month’s unusual warmth is likewise not some “fingerprint” of a climate emergency.

It is shameful that WHYY News and other media outlets do not undertake some basic research before publishing alarming climate stories. Referencing long-term data would result in a fact-based and nuanced scientific view of weather. Instead, harming their audience, they produce hyperbolic stories based on fearmongering grounded in unscientific attribution modeling done by groups like Climate Central. A week of warm weather after months of dreary early spring cold is hardly alarming and certainly provides no evidence that catastrophic climate change caused by humans is underway.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

U.S. heat-related deaths have fallen sharply over decades thanks to air conditioning, better infrastructure, early warnings, and adaptation — despite urban growth. Cold-related mortality historically exceeds heat-related in temperate zones. Long-term fingerprints of warming (e.g., global tropospheric patterns, ocean heat content) exist and are debated in magnitude and impacts. Single April ridges in the Northeast are not among them.

WHYY and Climate Central turned a predictable weather story into advocacy by cherry-picking a warm spell and a model-derived index while downplaying history and observational nuance. This pattern repeats with hot events (and is often absent for cold ones or quiet storm seasons).

The honest assessment: Modest anthropogenic warming shifts temperature distributions, contributing a small increment to extremes in a warmer baseline. But heat waves like this one are driven primarily by natural meteorological variability, amplified locally by urban effects. They have occurred for centuries and do not signal a climate “crisis” requiring rushed energy system overhauls.

Policy should emphasize resilience — reliable power, cooling access, accurate forecasting — and energy abundance over treating every warm spell as Exhibit A for net-zero mandates.

Physics, history, and data align: this was weather, not a fingerprint of doom.

The 1930s Dust Bowl era stands out as the period of peak heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity across much of the contiguous United States in the instrumental record (since ~1895). Multiple independent analyses of NOAA data confirm this, particularly for the central U.S., Great Plains, Midwest, and Upper Mississippi Valley.

Killer Climate Lawsuit on Shaky Ground

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit accusing some of the nation’s largest oil companies of causing global warming and therefore causing a Washington woman’s 2021 heat-wave death left out one critical detail: she had been diagnosed with heart disease.

A close-up of a dark, ominous figure with exaggerated features and glowing green eyes, set against a backdrop of a dramatic sunset and scattered debris.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

A fictional certificate of death depicting 'Climate Change' as the cause of death, featuring official document formatting and a decorative border.

Washington Free Beacon reports on shaky case to make climate change a killer First-Of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Blaming Oil Companies for Woman’s Heat-Wave Death Failed to Mention Her Heart Disease. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

‘The diagnosis and likely treatment for it is highly relevant,’
doctor tells Free Beacon

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit accusing some of the nation’s largest oil companies of causing global warming and therefore causing a Washington woman’s 2021 heat-wave death left out one critical detail: she had been diagnosed with heart disease.

Juliana Leon’s death certificate, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, shows she had been diagnosed with hypertensive cardiovascular disease, a condition that stems from unmanaged high blood pressure and increases the risks of heart failure and sudden cardiac death. The medical examiner for King County, Wash., determined that the condition contributed to her death, meaning it wasn’t the direct cause of death, but made her more vulnerable to it.

A cartoon depicting several characters in a room with a deceased man lying on the floor, with one character exclaiming, 'The global warming did it,' while another insists, 'I knew it! It's always the global warming.'

The wrongful death lawsuit Leon’s daughter filed earlier this year against oil companies, however, failed to make a single mention of her underlying condition. It instead focused entirely on the direct cause of death: hyperthermia.

The revelation, which has not been reported until now, is relevant because it could explain why Leon succumbed to the high temperatures that hit the Pacific Northwest in June 2021, according to doctors interviewed by the Free Beacon. And it is important too because of the lawsuit’s potentially wide-reaching impact. If successful, the lawsuit could lead to dozens of similar wrongful death suits and even future criminal homicide prosecutions against the oil industry.

The lawsuit—the first instance of a case attempting to put oil companies on the hook for heat-related wrongful death—is part of a coordinated effort nationwide to use the courts to cripple the oil industry and usher in a green energy transition. Activists say such litigation will hold the industry accountable, while critics say it is designed to bankrupt the industry, something that would have devastating economic impacts.

An illustration of a large block of money resembling a cake, with a slice cut out and a smaller piece next to it on a plate. A fork is placed beside the smaller piece.

“The main reasons for hyperthermia under these conditions include medications or skin conditions impairing the ability to sweat. People with hypertensive cardiovascular disease are likely to be taking such medicines,” said Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and a clinical lecturer at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

“I think the diagnosis and likely treatment for it are highly relevant,” she continued. “A body temperature as high as 110 is extremely unlikely without impairment in the body’s temperature-regulating mechanism, at least under the circumstances here. Most people will have dehydration, but not heat stroke, during a heat wave. This lady likely had both.”

Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the founder of a private surgical practice in Arizona, agreed that the diagnosis could be relevant.  Singer told the Free Beacon:

“Having hypertension and its cardiovascular stigmata, depending on severity, might affect a person’s risk of succumbing to hyperthermia. But it’s the hyperthermia that kills,”

Lawyers representing Leon’s estate and daughter did not respond to requests for comment.

Leon died on June 28, 2021, during an extreme heat wave, which ultimately claimed the lives of 100 people in Washington, state data show. According to the wrongful death lawsuit, Leon died in her car after the vehicle’s air conditioning system broke and as outside temperature exceeded 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Her internal temperature rose to 110 degrees Fahrenheit right before she died.

Two weeks earlier, Leon had undergone bariatric surgery, a weight-loss surgery that helps reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. As a result, she had been on a liquid diet in the two weeks leading up to her death. In fact, Leon died in her car on her drive home from the doctor’s office where she was informed that morning that she may begin to eat soft foods again.

Still, the lawsuit blames seven oil companies for her death, arguing that they knew their products caused global warming decades ago, but continued selling them anyway. The lawsuit states that the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest wouldn’t have occurred without human-caused global warming.

A study published in the American Meteorological Society’s journal Weather and Forecasting last year found that there is “little evidence” greenhouse gases amplified the heat wave and emphasized that weather forecasts for the event were “highly accurate.” “Global warming may have made a small contribution, but an extreme heat wave, driven by natural variability, would have occurred in any case,” it concluded.  Singer told the Free Beacon:

“You don’t need climate change to have a heat wave. Humans have been experiencing heat spells since the beginning of recorded history,”

The Free Beacon reported last week that an environmental group funded by the powerful Rockefeller Family Fund is quietly steering the wrongful death suit. According to legal filings, Leon’s daughter quietly appointed a climate activist to serve as the agent for her deceased mother’s estate. Those documents were authored by lawyers at the Rockefeller-backed Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit leading the coordinated, nationwide plan to “drive divestment” from and “delegitimize” the oil industry through litigation.

Graphic design featuring the text 'Jackpot Justice: Lawyers Gone Wild' over a background of dice and a gambling table

Gosh, really? NASA data reveal’s role of green spaces in cooling cities

From the “who whooda thunkit?” department and NASA Goddard come this bit of obvious science complete with a picture proudly proclaiming, “it’s hot and dry in the desert.” Government “science” at its best.

From Watts Up With That?

From Anthony Watts

From the “who whooda thunkit?” department and NASA Goddard come this bit of obvious science complete with a picture proudly proclaiming, “it’s hot and dry in the desert.” Government “science” at its best.

By Madeleine Gregory
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

As any urban dweller who has lived through a heat wave knows, a shady tree can make all the difference. But what happens when there’s no shade available?

A recent study in Nature Communications used NASA satellite data to identify a major gap in global resilience to climate change: cities in the Global South have far less green space — and therefore less cooling capacity — than cities in the Global North. The terms Global North and Global South were used in the study to distinguish developed countries (mostly in the Northern Hemisphere) from developing nations (mostly in the Southern Hemisphere).

Cities tend to be hotter than nearby rural areas because of the urban heat island effect. Heat-trapping dark surfaces such as sidewalks, buildings, and roads absorb heat from the Sun’s rays, which raises the temperature of the city. Extreme heat poses serious health threats for urban residents, including dehydration, heat stroke, and even death. Though not a cure-all, greenery provides shade and releases moisture into the air, cooling the surroundings.

“Cities can strategically prioritize developing new green spaces in areas that have less green space,” said Christian Braneon, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who was not affiliated with this study. “Satellite data can be really helpful for this.”

An international team of researchers led by Yuxiang Li, a doctoral student at Nanjing University, analyzed the 500 largest cities in the world to compare their cooling capacities. They used data from the Landsat 8 satellite, jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, to determine how effective green space was at cooling each city.

First, they calculated the average land surface temperature for the hottest month of 2018 for each city, as well as the average of the hottest months from 2017 to 2019. Next, the researchers used a metric called the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to map how much green space each city had. The NDVI relies on the fact that healthy vegetation absorbs red light and reflects infrared light: the ratio of these wavelengths can show the density of healthy vegetation in a given satellite image.

Researchers found that cities in the Global South have just 70% of the greenery-related cooling capacity of cities in the Global North. The green spaces in an average Global South city cool the temperature by about 4.5 F (2.5 C). In an average Global North city, that cooling capacity is 6.5 F (3.6 C). This compounds an existing problem: cities in the South tend to be at lower latitudes (that is, nearer to the Equator), which are predicted to see more heat extremes in the coming years.

“It’s already clear that Global South countries will be impacted by heat waves, rising temperatures, and climatic extremes more than their Global North counterparts,” said Chi Xu, a professor of ecology at Nanjing University and a co-author of the study. The Global South has less capacity to adapt to heat because air conditioning is less common, and power outages are more frequent.

Why do cities in the Global South struggle to stay cool? Cities in the Global South tend to have less green space than cities in the Global North. This mirrors studies of the disparities within cities, sometimes referred to as the “luxury effect”: wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more green space than poorer neighborhoods. “Wealthier cities also have more urban green spaces than the poorest cities,” Chi said.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the NASA and U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 satellite captured this natural color image of Sanaa, Yemen, on June 8, 2024. Sanaa, which has a hot, dry climate and little green space, had the second-lowest cooling capacity of 500 cities studied in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications. Wanmei Liang, NASA Earth Observatory

It’s unlikely that urban planners can close the gap between the study’s worst-performing city (Mogadishu, Somalia) and the best-performing one (Charlotte, North Carolina).

Mogadishu is a dense city with a dry climate that limits vegetation growth. Still, there’s a lot that each city can learn from its neighbors. Within a given region, the researchers identified the city with the greatest cooling capacity and used that as a goal. They calculated the difference between the best-performing city in the region and every city nearby to get the potential additional cooling capacity. They found that cities’ average cooling capacity could be increased substantially — to as much as 18 F (10 C) — by systematically increasing green space quantity and quality.

“How you utilize green space is really going to vary depending on the climate and the urban environment you’re focused on,” said Braneon, whose research at NASA focuses on climate change and urban planning.

Greener cities in the U.S. and Canada have lower population densities. However, fewer people per square mile isn’t necessarily good for the environment: residents in low-density cities rely more on cars, and their houses tend to be bigger and less efficient. Braneon noted that there’s a suite of solutions beyond just planting trees or designating parks: Cities can increase cooling capacity by creating water bodies, seeding green roofs, and painting roofs or pavement lighter colors to reflect more light.

With a global study like this, urban planners can compare strategies for cities within the same region or with similar densities. “For newly urbanized areas that aren’t completely built out, there’s a lot of room to still change the design,” Braneon said.

Journal – Nature Communications
The Paper: DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-51355-0 

No, Mainstream Media, Antarctica Isn’t ‘Burning’ from a Heat Wave

The photo above shows the headline of SciTechDaily: Earth’s Last Frontier Burns: Record-Breaking Heat Strikes Antarctica in Winter. Elsewhere, The Economic Times weighed in with Antarctica’s record heat wave: A threat to global sea levels and ice integrity, while CNN blared ‘Astonishing’ Antarctica heat wave sends temperatures 50 degrees above normal.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A variety of mainstream media outlets claim Antarctica is burning up, registering unusually hot temperatures due to climate change, citing a recent study as the source for their stories. The stories misrepresent the study’s findings and the science. The peer reviewed paper that the headlines reference clearly states that a short-term weather event was the cause, not climate change. Also, contrary to media’s claims, there was no “heat wave,” since the official meteorological criteria for calling this event a heat wave was not met.

The photo above shows the headline of SciTechDaily: Earth’s Last Frontier Burns: Record-Breaking Heat Strikes Antarctica in Winter. Elsewhere, The Economic Times weighed in with Antarctica’s record heat wave: A threat to global sea levels and ice integrity, while CNN blared ‘Astonishing’ Antarctica heat wave sends temperatures 50 degrees above normal.

First, let’s refute the obvious. As is clear in the photo with the SciTechDaily headline above, nothing was burning in Antarctica despite the claim of a “continent afire.”

SciTechDaily says this:

In March 2022, the most intense heat wave ever recorded on Earth hit Antarctica, just as organisms in the southern region braced themselves for the long, harsh winter ahead. The extreme weather raised temperatures in parts of Antarctica to more than 70°F above average, melting glaciers and snow even in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, one of the planet’s coldest and driest regions.

Putting that paragraph and those headlines in the proper perspective, we turn to the definition of a heat wave from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

A heat wave is a period of unusually hot weather that typically lasts two or more days. To be considered a heat wave, the temperatures have to be outside the historical averages for a given area.

While there were in fact less cold than normal temperatures in Antarctica during a one-day weather event, the temperature only briefly went above freezing, so there was no measurable melting. The practice of applying a “heat wave” label to such an event is erroneous.

The paper the media referred as the source of their alarming headlines says, “Record high temperatures were documented in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, on 18 March 2022, exceeding average temperatures for that day by nearly 30°C.”

Further, the data they provide in the form of figure 1 shows the temperature in several location in Antarctica:

Figure 1 (a) Map of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica and (b) the location of meteorological stations where air temperature was recorded at Lake Bonney, Lake Hoare, Lake Fryxell, the Friis Hills, and Lake Vanda. March 2022 temperature spikes circled in red by A. Watts. Source article: Response of a Terrestrial Polar Ecosystem to the March 2022 Antarctic Weather Anomaly

As you can see in the temperature graphs on the right side of the figure (b) in March 2022, there were some brief spikes in temperature for one day (circled in red), where the freezing temperature of 0°C (32°F) was approached or exceeded. After that, temperatures immediately returned to normal for the area.

So in the context of NOAA’s heat wave definition above, the two-day minimum criteria were not met so referring to the brief temperature spike as a “heat wave” was erroneous or fake news.

The peer reviewed paper said the cause of the event was, “[a]n atmospheric river caused extreme weather in the Antarctic Dry Valleys in March 2022 with temperatures 25°C above average conditions.” Even the title of the peer reviewed paper, “Response of a Terrestrial Polar Ecosystem to the March 2022 Antarctic Weather Anomaly,” and calls it a weather anomaly.

A single day weather event, that briefly caused temperatures to go above normal doesn’t meet the meteorological definition of a heat wave, or a signal of climate change since it is not indicative of a long term 30-year trend of temperatures on the continent.

Despite these scientific facts, the mainstream media outlets reporting the event described it variously as “[a] threat to global sea levels and ice integrity,” an “astonishing heat wave,” and a “burning continent of Antarctica” in the eyes of the media.

The level of exaggeration, to use CNN’s word, is astonishing.

The “news reporting” on this study and the weather anomaly it discussed is all too typical of the effort by media organizations to blame every weather event that falls even slightly outside the norm for no matter how brief a period of time as caused by climate change – even when the underlying research makes no such connection. Weather is not climate. They operate on completely different time scales.

This sort of reporting is unprofessional, a disgusting disservice to the public who the media is supposed to inform, not mislead and indoctrinate.

Alarmist Predictions False! Not A Single Heat Wave This Summer At Cologne-Bonn

An analysis of data show that the Cologne-Bonn airport hasn’t had a single real heat wave so far this summer, as was the case in most places in Germany.

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

An analysis of data show that the Cologne-Bonn airport hasn’t had a single real heat wave so far this summer, as was the case in most places in Germany.

“Experts” predicting a “summer of hell” are proven wrong.

Hat-tip: Snowfan

Firstly, there is no standardized international definition of the term heatwave. Definitions are often based on a combination of percentile-based threshold values.

For example, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines a heat wave as a period during which the daily maximum temperature exceeds for more than five consecutive days the maximum normal temperature by 5 degrees Celsius.

At the start of summer, climate alarmists predicted Germany would likely see a “summer of hell” with extreme heat waves and misery for Germans. Today we look back at this prediction, using data from the Cologne-Bonn airport weather station.

The Cologne-Bonn airport is located right smack in the middle of Europe, and the following chart depicts the daily high temperatures recorded there this summer:

Chart: WetterOnline.

Though the temperature very briefly peaked over 30°C a few times this summer, there was never a protracted period of heat extending over days.

After having hit 33°C and 29°C on August 11 and 12 respectively, the temperature peaked at a balmy high of 34°C on August 13th. But then the temperature rapidly cooled off the next day, reaching a high of just over 24°C.

In summary: the summer of 2024 in Cologne didn’t see a single extended period of extreme heat, unless. that is, you call 3 days above 28°C a heat wave.

This was the case across much of Germany. Granted, some German cities perhaps experienced warmer periods.

One thing is sure: the “summer of hell” in Germany predicted earlier by Marc Benecke has now been exposed as just a plain-stupid climate horror story, probably intended to scare the FridaysForFuture kids.

Blaming a Heat Wave on Park Fire’s Size is Scientifically Dishonest!

Climate alarmists, like Dr Daniel Swain https://weatherwest.com have pushed a false narrative to most media outlets that California’s summer heat wave, made worse by rising CO2, caused drier vegetation that made the Park Fire one of California’s biggest. But the science exposes his false narrative as just more climate crisis fear mongering.

From Jim Steele

Climate alarmists, like Dr Daniel Swain https://weatherwest.com have pushed a false narrative to most media outlets that California’s summer heat wave, made worse by rising CO2, caused drier vegetation that made the Park Fire one of California’s biggest. But the science exposes his false narrative as just more climate crisis fear mongering.

Fire science has determined fuel moisture content, wind speeds, and fuel density are the primary determinants of wildfire spread. The Park Fire rapidly spread through grasslands and shrubland and oak woodlands dominated by 1-hour and 10-hour fuels. That means climate change is totally irrelevant, as only one day of hot dry weather rapidly reduces the moisture content of dead grass and leaf debris (1-hour fire fuels), making those fire fuels highly flammable.

Published scientific research (Masinda 2021) has determined the moisture content threshold for rapid ignition by a single match for dead pine needles is 33%, oak leaves 26%, grass 22%. The Park Fire, started by an arsonist, began in a park in the town of Chico California. So, what was the fuel moisture around Chico?

Average July temperatures for Chico are 98 degrees Fahrenheit while Relative Humidity falls to 28%. Numerous studies of hay drying have determined at 95 F and 30% RH, grass fuel moisture content falls to 5% (graphic A), causing grass fires to very easily ignite and naturally spread rapidly. How much drier were the fire fuels due to the heat wave?

At 5% fuel moisture, dead fuels hold the moisture more tightly to the vegetations fibers. Thus, as Graphic B shows (from National Wildfire Coordinating Group), as relative humidity falls higher temperature differences have less of an effect on Fuel Moisture Content. At 30% RH, a temperature increases from 75F to 100F, reduces fuel moisture by less than a half %. Despite the narrative by climate alarmists like Swain, the California heat wave had virtually no impact on fuel moisture and the Park Fire’s rapid spread. Climate change is not making wildfires worse!!!

Temperature Alarmism: WSJ Fail (Doug Sheridan corrects)

It’s an election year. The mainstream media (including the news side of the WSJ) is in the tank for climate alarmism, forced energy transformation, and a Biden reelection. Reader beware!

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“It’s an election year. The mainstream media (including the news side of the WSJ) is in the tank for climate alarmism, forced energy transformation, and a Biden reelection. Reader Beware!”

“Millions of Americans Brace for Dangerous Heat Wave, Record-Breaking Temperatures,” wrote Gareth Vipers for the Wall Street Journal (June 18, 2024). “Triple-digit temperatures are expected across much of the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and New England.”

Doug Sheridan graded the news article:

Last week, after a  news article warned of almost 70 MM people coming under threat of extreme heat in the US Midwest and Northeast, we posted our intention to audit the accuracy of the article and forecast by examinating the actual temps recorded after the fact. Here’s a link to that June 18th post. 

Well, last week has come and gone, and we’ve completed the audit. It’s not pretty. While we had hoped it would show reporting and forecasts in 2024 improved over prior years, we were disappointed. Below is a summary of the results of the audit, with temp data per :

— Only four of 14 weather stations in seven Midwestern and Northeastern states over the five days incurred a single *record* high. Three were highs of 96, 96 and 98 F at Manchester-Boston Regional airport on Jun 18, 19, and 20. Another high was set at Midway Airport in Chicago on the 20th. The remaining highs at all stations averaged just 88.8 F… almost 9 degrees *below* the average of the stations’ record highs.

— Notably, four of the 14 stations—Wausau WI, Peoria IL, Mt Pleasant MI, and Greenfield MA—recorded at least one day in which the high didn’t even reach the historical *average* temp for the station. That certainly doesn’t comport with the existence of widespread extreme heat.

— For the remaining 76 non-record-breaking measurements, the seven large urban stations averaged highs of 90.5 F over the five days, 7.4 degrees below the average of record highs for those same stations. This compares to average recorded highs of 86.3 F for the seven small-town weather stations, a full 10.5 degrees below their average record highs and 4.2 degrees lower than the large urban stations.

— Remarkably, for three of the five days—the 20th, 21st and 22nd—the average highs across all 14 stations were closer to the historic daily *average* temps than to the record temps for the day.

— Evidence of a heat-island effect might exist in the data. To wit, across all observations, the seven large urban stations recorded highs 1.1 F above the seven small-town stations in the same seven states. What’s more, no (ie, zero) record highs were recorded in the small towns… compared to four record highs in the large urban locales. Kinda suspicious, no?

— Not a single station on a single day (80 observations in all) recorded a temp of “triple-digits” as the WSJ article warned. Zero!

Conclusion

If we had to hand out a grade for the combined efforts of the WSJ reporting and the underlying forecasts, it would be a D or D-minus. You see, a five-day period in which the average high hits just 88.4 F simply doesn’t justify the “Dangerous Heat Wave” piece that was published in the WSJ. Period.

Of course, it’s a long summer, and we’ll post more audits as it heats up. Maybe those will show reported forecasts to be more accurate. Until then, stay tuned… safe… and cool.

—————–

It’s an election year. The mainstream media (including the news side of the WSJ) is in the tank for climate alarmism, forced energy transformation, and a Biden reelection. Reader beware!

Heatwave Alarm Season is Here – The Climate Realism Show #114

We see this every year, and we’ll see it again this year as the feckless media regurgitates the heatwave hype. We will tackle this subject, as well as go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

The Heartland Institute

Same Old Climate Claims, Different Year

Yes, it’s that time again kids, panic the American people over heat waves by blaming them on climate change.
This past week several news outlets talked about the “Western Heat Wave” and tried to link it to “climate change.” Climate Central was the source of most of these stories with a press release that said:

“Between June 5-7, much of the Western United States, Mexico, and Eastern Canada are poised to experience a period of unusually hot conditions made much more likely because of human-caused climate change. During this period, over 229 million people across North America will experience extreme heat made at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change.”

We see this every year, and we’ll see it again this year as the feckless media regurgitates the heatwave hype. We will tackle this subject, as well as go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

What NASA and the European Space Agency are admitting but the media are failing to report about our current heat wave

The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.

FILE PHOTO: A view of the January 15, 2022, eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Tongan submarine volcano, taken by Japan’s Himawari-8 satellite about 100 minutes after the eruption started. Simon Proud / University of Oxford, RAL Space, NCEO / Japan Meteorological Agency via REUTERS

From Watts Up With That?

Reposted from American Thinker

By Thomas Lifson

Bumped from Sunday:

The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.

So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption last year that I – probably along with you — had never heard of. The mass media ignored it because it took place 490 feet underwater in the South Pacific. Don’t take it from me, take it from NASA (and please do follow the link to see time lapse satellite imagery of the underwater eruption and subsequent plume of gasses and water injected into the atmosphere):

still from the time lapse photos

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

Geophysical-Research-Letters-2022-Mill-nHerunterladen

In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere. [emphases added]

NASA published the above in August 2022. Half a year later, a newer study increased the estimate of the water vapor addition to the atmosphere by 30%. From the European Space Agency:

In a recent paper published in Nature, a team of scientists showed the unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% (relative to climatological levels) and a five-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load – the highest in the last three decades.

Using a combination of satellite data, including data from ESA’s Aeolus satellite, and ground-based observations, the team found that due to the extreme altitude, the volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in just one week and dispersed nearly pole-to-pole in three months. [emphasis added]

Another scientific paper explains the “net warming of the climate system” on a delayed basis.  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory further explains:

Volcanic eruptions rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In the 18 years that NASA has been taking measurements, only two other eruptions – the 2008 Kasatochi event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – sent appreciable amounts of water vapor to such high altitudes. But those were mere blips compared to the Tonga event, and the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano, on the other hand, could remain in the stratosphere for several years.

This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn’t inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere [Emphases added]

So there you have it: we are in for extra atmospheric heat “for several years” until the extra water vapor injected by this largest-ever-recorded underwater volcano eruption dissipates.

Jeff Childers, who brought this scientific data to my notice, writes:

Here’s why corporate media is ignoring the most dramatic climate even[t] in modern history: because you can’t legislate underwater volcanoes. You can try, but they won’t listen. So what’s the fun in that? Corporate media only exists to further political ends. Since volcanoes aren’t subject to politics, why bother?

He brings up the work of Ethical Skeptic:

Ethical is suggesting that the water is heating the air — instead of the other way around. And the Earth’s core is heating the water.  It’s a theory that explains everything.

Meanwhile, “science” is baffled. From just a month ago, in mid-June:

See? But though scientists are baffled, corporate media and its repulsive allies are busily blaming ocean warming on carbon dioxide — a ludicrous notion.

I am the first to admit that none of this – not the atmospheric CO2 theory of global warming, nor the effect of the largest ever known undersea volcanic eruption – is scientifically proven. But before we impoverish ourselves trying to reduce CO2 emissions (while watching China dramatically increase them), let’s practice real science and not jump to conclusions based on an imaginary “consensus.”

Hat tip: Alan Fraser

WUWT H/T’s to: John Tillman, John W, Luke L