In Iran it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit today (46 C). Add in humidity and the heat index was a stunning 165 F (74 C). But what they really should be concerned about is the wet bulb reading…
A Limit to Human Heat Endurance
Thirty five degrees Celsius. According to recent research, it’s the wet bulb temperature at which the human body is rendered physically unable to cool itself in the shade. At which evaporation not longer cools the skin. A temperature that results in hyperthermia, heat exhaustion and heat stroke — even when sitting still and out of direct sunlight over the course of about 1-3 hours. Basically, it’s the physical limits of human heat endurance.
The primary factors involved in determining wet bulb temperature are atmospheric temperature and humidity. The temperature of an air parcel cooled to saturation (100 percent humidity). Basically, it’s the coolest temperature human skin is able to achieve by sweating.
One of the reasons why high heat and high humidity seem so oppressive is the fact that it interferes with water evaporating from your skin keeping your body at its natural temperature (98.6 F). High heat + high humidity means less cooling at skin level, which can result in a pretty rapid over-heating. We’ve all experienced it, that sense of stifling on a hot, muggy day. And there’s a bone-deep reason why it feels so bad. Hit a too-high intensity and it’s a killer.
(An oppressive heat dome high pressure system settles in over the Persian Gulf. Image source: Ryan Maue.)
At 47 percent relative humidity and 115 degrees Fahrenheit, it felt like 165 degrees (F) today in Bandar Mahshahr, Iran. That’s a wet bulb temperature of 34.7 C. A temperature near the edge of human limits and the second highest heat index value ever recorded in any official or unofficial measure (the highest unofficial measure was 178 F). It’s the kind of heat that is, quite frankly, deadly.
Heat Dome Settles Over Persian Gulf, Sea Surface Temperatures Spike
Bandar Mahshahr sits at the Northern end of the Persian Gulf. A region of water that features some of the highest sea surface temperatures on Earth. Over the past week, an oppressive heat dome high pressure system began to settle over the region. Air temperatures around the Gulf hit well above 110 F in many locations. In Baghdad, they soared to 122 degrees F (50 C). Yesterday and today, the sea surface temperatures also sweltered — ranging as high as 34.6 C (94 degrees F).
Since ocean surface temperatures produce latent heat and determine the maximum moisture loading of the Earth atmosphere, maximum sea surface temperature is a good basic yardstick to determine if surface wet bulb temperatures are capable of hitting or exceeding the human survivability threshold at 35 C. And what we are seeing is that the near Persian Gulf region is steadily entering this dangerous range.
(Sweltering sea surface temperatures like those now visible in the Persian Gulf can support heatwaves that the human body did not evolve to endure. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)
As the heat dome continues to settle in over the next week, there is increasing risk to the people living in the Persian Gulf region. Some have access to cooled shelters, life saving ice and water. But many do not. At particular risk are the over 3 million Iraqis displaced by the violent conflict wracking that fractured state. Chronic electricity and water cuts throughout the region also lends to the overall vulnerability. It’s a current crisis. But it is one that occurs in an overall worsening context.
As the world’s oceans continue to be warmed by heat trapped through human greenhouse gas emissions, sea surface temperature thresholds will be driven inexorably higher. The potential moisture content in the near surface atmosphere will rise and so will temperatures. This will increasingly generate heatwaves which the human body simply does not have the physical capacity to endure. Overall, this is one of the reasons we see more mass casualty events as a result of heatwaves — like the events occurring this year in Pakistan and India. It’s a case of pushing the atmospheric heat and moisture loading beyond human survivability thresholds. And we’re steadily doing that now. Let’s hope that this week’s Persian Gulf heatwave doesn’t add another hothouse mass casualty event to the growing list.
Links:
Middle East Broils Under Extreme Heatwave
Iran City Hits Suffocating Heat Index
Pakistan Heatwave Mass Casualty Event
India Heatwave Mass Casualty Event
Hat Tip to Robert in New Orleans
robertscribbler 
NevenA
/ July 31, 2015Are those °C correct? 35 degrees sounds too low. More like 53 °C, but I don’t know anything about wet bulb temp.
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robertscribbler
/ July 31, 201535 degrees Celsius wet bulb. It’s a reading you get from adding in temperature + relative humidity. It’s meant to simulate the temperature of skin after evaporative cooling.
I’ll try to clarify more in text.
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wili
/ July 31, 2015I find that many people just can’t believe that just trying to exist in wbts of 35 is fatal. Everyone is sure that they have worked in temperatures higher than that where the humidity was very high. But the fact is that, unless they happened to be at the place and time that actually beat the record you describe here, they haven’t. Or they probably wouldn’t be here.
But people always say, “Oh, well, if you were in the shade, or if there were a nice breeze, you would be alright.” But those things are totally irrelevant. At wbt of 35 your body simply start to cook.
As everybody knows, internal body temperature is 98.6 F/ 37 C. Your skin has to be at least two degrees C cooler than that to adequately regulate your internal temperature. To do that at higher _absolute_ temperatures than 35 C, your skin perspires and the cooling effect of the evaporation of that perspiration is what keeps you in the safe range.
But if it’s 100% humidity, no evaporation can happen, so no amount of perspiration (or shade or wind..) is going to help. From there on up, there is a scale for how much humidity there has to be at higher absolute temperatures for your skin not to be able to adequately evaporate enough perspiration to keep your body cool enough to keep from starting to cook in your own juices.
Everything that I’ve read has indicated that pretty much everybody is dead after being subjected to 6 hours of wbts of 35C, no matter how much of a breeze there is, how big of a fan you have, or how deep the shade is that you have found.
Everybody dies.
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robertscribbler
/ July 31, 2015Wili’s a smart guy. Folks should give him a good listen.
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Miep
/ August 1, 2015Yeah, makes sense. Like how fevers kill people. Although it does leave me wondering why baths and steam rooms, hot tubs, don’t kill people. I guess people don’t tend to do it for six hours.
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dtlange
/ July 31, 2015Wili’s right on target there.
I just want to add that the human brain with also likely go a variety of cognitive dysfunctions as the brain heats up in its skull encasement.
Critical thinking and judgement, will prove to be extremely elusive.
Thanks for the stark reminder, Wili.
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wili
/ July 31, 2015jai mitchell does a nice job of trotting out the relevant charts, etc, on this thread at neven’s forum: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?topic=428.msg58957#msg58957
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Spike
/ August 1, 2015And of course working at even lower WBT would risk death due to exposure to radiant heat of sunlight, protective clothing, additional metabolic heat, and dehydration and salt loss from sweating. Many nations are going to find there is substantial economic impact as working becomes untenable or lethal and productivity declines. I note Iraq has had to give everyone a 4 day holiday.
When my father was in the Navy in the far East he worked all night and sweltered in a hammock in the day and that was back in the 1950s.
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robertscribbler
/ July 31, 2015Should be pretty clear now.
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NevenA
/ July 31, 2015You could clarify, or I could go and read up, so I know what I’m talking about. Thanks, Robert.
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robertscribbler
/ July 31, 2015No worries Neven. If someone as sharp as you doesn’t get it at first read, then it’s on me. Thanks for the feedback, my friend.
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Robert A. Vella
/ July 31, 2015Reblogged this on The Secular Jurist.
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wehappyfew
/ July 31, 2015I found a spot in the Persian gulf with 36.3C just offshore from Abu Dhabi a few days ago…
24.75° N, 53.77° E ✕
36.3 °C
Date | 2015-07-26 19:00 Local ⇄ UTC
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James Burton
/ July 31, 2015For many places on earth, the sea is a great moderator of temperatures. We all know in hot weather you want to be close to the sea or a lake, sea breezes bring relief. Coastal temperatures are more bearable, while inland the heat soars in these high pressure heat domes. That means sea temperatures are vital cooling mechanisms for people living near the sea. In San Diego, when the temperature inland was in the 90’s, the lucky ones on the shore were seeing high 70’s or lower. My point is, as global warming increases sea temperatures, the seas are less able to moderate local coasts, and people living there will no longer have cool sea breezes, but warmer and warmer winds blowing off the heating seas. I don’t know what science says on the subject, but the layman like me has already experience of what warming water temperatures mean.
Living on Lake Superior, is basically like living on the sea. I live right on the shore, my lifetime has been one where we all know that any lake breeze brings cool or cold air. Heatwaves would break locally with any breath of lake airs. Now, after 4 decades of global warming, this lake’s temperatures have climbed steadily. In the year 2015, a lake breeze in July no longer can break the heat of a hot summer day like it used to. Years ago a strong lake wind would cool things miles inland, not just locally. Today, a 90 degree and humid day, is only slightly moderated by lake winds. In another decade, it will be even less so.
It must follow that world wide, coastal micro climates that rely on cool oceans to produce liveable conditions for humans, plants and animals, will no longer exist, the way the oceans are trapping heat. I’ve lived in many coastal climates when in the Navy, the seas almost always provide a negative temperature compared to heat waves on land. I assume this effect is set to become ever so less prevalent?
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wili
/ July 31, 2015Nicely put. But it’s even worse. As sst’s increase, being near some waters puts you in the front line for the kinds of deadly wbt’s we’re talking about.
This is the kind of upside-down world we’re talking about going forward. The things that used to be a relief become things to avoid.
Immediately to the point of the article–with temps and humidity high enough that you can start to talk about deadly wbt’s, the very perspiration that at lower wbt’s would have cooled you off, actually end up heating you up.
As I said above, the bodies internal temp is 37. But at 35 wbt, your perspiration doesn’t evaporate, so it stays on the body and actually insulates it, so the heat your body is always generating can not as easily get out, even if the external temperature is lower than your body’s internal temp.
What once cooled you, now makes you heat even faster.
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015Yeah, James. That’s very true. The same thing happens with foggy conditions that no longer fluctuate through the day and night cycles. It happened in Santa Barbara. There have been references in the news to this sort of thing.
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dtlange
/ July 31, 2015RS: “the sea surface temperatures also sweltered — ranging as high as 34.6 C (94 degrees F).”
I’m reminded of the recent comment by a Navy officer (that I brought attention to) who was part of a panel of experts talking to some Congress members at an information gathering event. (Not an official Congressional Committee.)
The officer noted the water temps getting higher in the Strait of Hormuz. Water temps that had been in the 90s F were going up to 100 F.
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dtlange
/ July 31, 2015– Twitter post by Anthony Sagliani @anthonywx
Synoptic reports from Baghdad, Iraq indicate that temp hit 51C (123.8F) on 30 July, tying all-time record high.
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Miep
/ August 1, 2015And in that whole time it never got below 40. That’s 103 F.
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dtlange
/ July 31, 2015— – Twitter post by Anthony Sagliani @anthonywx
Stunningly high ground-surface temperatures around Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf & Iraq. As high as 64C (147F).
GFS MODEL – Analysis 12Z Temp – ground surface
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wili
/ August 1, 201564 would be considerably higher than any confirmed temperature ever recorded on the planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records
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skylanetc
/ July 31, 2015Wet Bulb T can be measured directly by a device known as a sling psychrometer. In fact, that is where the term comes from:
Click to access psychro.pdf
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Dan B
/ July 31, 2015When I was ten years old my mother, brother, and I went to visit my grandfather in northwest Arkansas. Thunderstorms threatened on the drive there (from northeast Arkansas). The next morning the sun was not visible in the sky which was cloudless but grey to the horizon. At 8 AM there was a heavy dew on the ground. It was 90 degrees. By noon in was 105 F. We lay on the beds with fans on us. The sheets were drenched with sweat which ran off our skin. By 4 PM I was semi delirious. My grandfather took off his long underwear and put on his shorter long underwear. We went home to cool(er) northeast Arkansas the next day.
India doesn’t allow work outside when the temperature hits 50 C. The weather bureau changes the temperature reading so people work in the heat anyway.
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Andy in SD
/ August 1, 2015“The weather bureau changes the temperature reading so people work in the heat anyway.”
That is like the temperature monitor in Las Vegas in July / August. It seems they keep it in the shade with a swamp cooler pointed at it.
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Maria
/ July 31, 2015The kids have a rougher time with extreme heat(and cold). I was a pediatric ICU nurse for many years. Once that cycle of hyperthermia begins, it’s a tough one to reverse. To begin with, as dtlange pointed upthread re: brain function. The negative sequalae with their own feedback loops are multiplied in children.
Exercising children do not adapt to extremes of temperature as effectively as adults when exposed to a
high climatic heat stress.1 The adaptation of adolescents falls in between. The reasons for these differences include:
1. Children have a greater surface area-to-body mass ratio than adults, which causes a greater heat gain from the environment on a hot day and a greater heat loss to the environment on a cold day.
2. Children produce more metabolic heat per mass unit than adults during physical activities that include walking or running.2
3. Sweating capacity is considerably lower in children than in adults,1,3,4 which reduces the ability of children to dissipate body heat by evaporation.
Click to access climaticstressandtheexercisingchild.pdf
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Loni
/ August 1, 2015This is very useful information, Maria. Thank you for sharing it. You may have saved some lives.
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Maria
/ August 1, 2015You’re welcome Loni. I”m glad you found it helpful. Don’t hesitate to give a holler re: pedi related issues. If I don’t have the answer I should be able to track down someone who does.
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Greyson Smythe
/ August 1, 2015Something else people might keep in mind. The neurological pathways to sweat glands are still forming in the first 3 (I think) years of life. People in colder climates have less fine-grained connection to them than people in warmer climates, and people habituated in infancy to warmer climates have better response to the heat.
If you have small children, it might make sense not to keep them in the air conditioning in the summer.
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Sunkensheep
/ August 3, 2015Very important. I still can’t believe people lock their children inside cars during warm weather in this country. It results in needless death and injury every year.
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Maria
/ July 31, 2015My apologies. I did not provide quotes to separate my own text from the original paper. “Exercising children………..” is where it begins.
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015Thanks for watching out for our children, Maria.
Our children do suffer to different degrees than adults.
Children are among the first to suffer from air pollution.
Their metabolism and more rapid breathing make them vulnerable.
But we still allow schools and traffic pollution corridors to exist side by side.
And for heat islands we even make hem play on heat absorbing asphalt playgrounds.
Then there are the sure fire traffic jams at all schools when class begins or ends.
It’s a sad commentary — but it is allowed by our Congress.
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015(t)hem play
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Maria
/ August 1, 2015Thanks dtlange. I agree with you on all counts.
The record number and severity of fires this season concerns me re: kids asthma attacks rates. They are more likely to be lethal than in an adult. I also appreciate that you point to congress in many of your posts. It’s something that’s helpful for me to bear in mind.
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Robert In New Orleans
/ August 1, 2015The month of July has been very hot (90-95F) here in New Orleans and with the typical Gulf of Mexico humidity the heat index is often 10 to 15 degrees higher. You step outside from a nice air conditioned office or store and its like walking into a wall and then you go sit in your car and it is a blast furnace on wheels. How did people live in the South live before AC and what does the future hold for us?
What happens to New Orleans first?
Destroyed by monster tropical storms.
Flooded by sea level rise and subsidence.
Wet roasted by extreme heat.
Sickened by tropical diseases.
Anything else?
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Syd Bridges
/ August 1, 2015Thanks, Robert. I often don’t comment but I always read your posts. This year has been one disaster after another: all predictable and all caused by us. Clearly, the canaries are expiring at an ever-increasing rate. However, Congress will order the breeding of more robust canaries. Failing that, they can always buy parrots from the pet shop in the Monty Python sketch.
This is really killer heat, though I’m sure Judith Curry will say it’s their own fault for not having air conditioning. How long before we see these temperatures in the Mediterranean?
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labmonkey2
/ August 1, 2015Ahhhh the lovely Norwegian Blue (he’s not dead, he’s just resting) – always pining for the fjords, they are… 😉
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Loni
/ August 1, 2015My heart goes out to the Middle East, blessed by oil, and cursed by it’s exploitation.
A Devils’ Bargain.
Thanks to all for clarifying wet bulb temps., and how it works.
Another great post Robert, thank you.
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Andy in SD
/ August 1, 2015Puget Sound getting toasty
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/the-blob-warms-puget-sounds-waters-hurts-marine-life/
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015– From the above link.
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Loni
/ August 1, 2015Still pondering the fate of the Middle East.
What irony, that after 1000’s of tumultuous years, capped off by the machinations and horrible suffering of the last few decades, that the ‘cradle of man’, the birth place of so many religions, would become one of the first places rendered unlivable.
King David gave the choice, “Cut the baby in two, or one gets it.” Well, looks like we’ve cut the baby in two.
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James Burton
/ August 1, 2015“Unlivable” is a key word you used. We already see the migrant rush to gain entry into Europe, much of which is coming from the Middle East and North Africa, places under heat and drought stress. Today’s hundreds of thousands seeking EU entry, will become millions very shortly. The EU refuses to act, they are clueless, just sitting in Brussels and spending their high pay and premiums as EU legislators.
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Ed-M
/ August 1, 2015And leaving Greece and Italy to take care of all those refugees, even while giving “Pay or die” ultimatums to Greece and following through.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015Toxic Floods From Coal Mines and Power Plants Hit Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site
The historic floods in Quang Ninh with total rainfall in the past three days up to 600-800 mm caused mountain erosion, ruined many houses and left 18 dead. There are six people still missing. Photo credit: Vietnamnet
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/31/vietnam-floods/
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Abel Adamski
/ August 3, 2015A meter of rain and the intense rains are expected to last the remainder of the week
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33754910
Half a meter for Vietnam so far
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/33692684
Another meter of rain expected over the rest of the week
Then of course India – first lethal heat waves now floods (wonder how the Himalaya’s are going if that warm rain deluges the glaciers)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33754952
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015Sea change: Here’s what’s wrong in the Pacific Ocean
Weird things are happening off the Pacific Coast.
And at the center of the action is a warm-water mass that scientists call “the blob.”
It’s turning the coastal ecosystem on its head. Species are dying along Washington, Oregon and northern California: sea stars, marine birds and sardines, among them.
It started in the fall of 2013 when the Gulf of Alaska’s usual winter storms didn’t show up to cool down the Pacific.
That gave rise to an expanse of warmer water, according to Bill Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
And it has spread. By last summer the blob had consumed the entire North Pacific from California to Canada. A few months later it had touched the West Coast shore. Now it spans 2,000 miles from Baja, Mexico to Alaska, stretching 500 miles wide.
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/07/blob.html
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Miep
/ August 1, 2015Whoah. Thanks.
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015– PDX
Yeah, it made the front page of the Saturday Oregonian. It’s hard to miss on the newsstand. But most shoppers didn’t seem to notice. Tip, traditionally, Saturday has the lowest readership and attention. But the Oregonian is doing a fine job for the moment. Wait and see what headlines are on Monday’s edition.
Story has almost 100 comments online, already.
I do make it a point to thank the reporter for their important effort.
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015– Must tether all relevant aspects, on-shore and off, of our PNW Cascadia AK to Cal. situation.
– Freshwater PNW The USA Today Saturday edition has a punchy headline.
Heat, drought cook fish alive in Pacific Northwest
Freakishly hot, dry weather in the Pacific Northwest is killing millions of fish in the overheated waters of the region’s rivers and streams.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/07/31/fish-kills-hot-water-pacific-northwest/30949551/
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 1, 2015Regrettably, though, the Oregonian has published quite a bit of anti-wind energy material in the past. I’m glad they are giving good coverage to the protest.
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Spike
/ August 1, 2015Another feature of heat stroke if not lethal is the very high rates of disability in survivors, with high rates of late mortality.
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=711589
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Spike
/ August 1, 2015“Most of the country is flooded now,” said a director at the social welfare ministry who did not want to be named, explaining that all but one of Myanmar’s 14 provinces and regions were affected by the flash floods, rising waters and landslides caused by the downpour.
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/08/severe-flooding-hampers-rescue-efforts-in-myanmar-at-least-27-dead-2/
And Bangladesh is also impacted by extreme rainfall according to this tweet
Normal July rainfall is 902mm (35.5in) he later comments
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Spike
/ August 1, 2015The lack of action to avert extreme global warming on the part of the UK and other rich nations will only lead to more instability and greatly increase numbers fleeing poorer regions.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27989-calais-migrant-chaos-is-a-taste-of-what-a-warmer-world-may-bring/
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015Here’s a useful term I heard used by a in testimony before a congressional committe about Iran’s various political ventures but really does apply to CC.
“Regional destabilization”, is the term.
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entropicman
/ August 1, 2015Much more of this and the Sahara monsoon will return.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015Dry trees: Study says drought affects forests for years, changes climate models
New research suggests that Canada’s drought-stricken forests will take years longer to recover from dry weather than previously thought.
In a study published in Science magazine, William Anderegg of Princeton University said trees feel the lingering effects of a drought for up to four years.
“Drought is always (thought of) as a light switch: when it’s dry, trees grow slowly, but the moment the rains come back and the soil gets wetter, it’s like the trees recover perfectly and almost immediately,” he said.
“It turns out it doesn’t work like that.”
Agriculture Canada figures suggest the Northwest Territories and the northern reaches of the provinces have received between 60 and 85 per cent of normal precipitation this summer. But after repeated dry years, soil moisture is less than 40 per cent of normal.
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johnrussell40
/ August 1, 2015I think it’s a highly plausible scenario that within the foreseeable future an extreme ‘wet bulb’ event will make a part of the world—maybe in India or the Middle East—uninhabitable. Think about it: flooding, hurricanes, snow storms mean bunkering down, perhaps moving temporarily and being resourceful for a period… and then it’s back to normal. But it only needs one abrupt wet bulb over-temperature event of more than a few hours’ duration and all mammals exposed—including humans—are dead from heat stroke. Any region that becomes prone to such events, even if they’re once-in-a-100-years, is uninhabitable. This is new territory for the planet in the modern era.
If we carry on with business as usual, in due course the only solution will be to emigrate from those zones, so imagine the pressure that will put on temperate areas.
But there’s an up side. The first indication that this is happening and the world will suddenly realise that climate change is here and it’s potentially as catastrophic as scientists warn. Hopefully this will put an end to the prevarication and we can divert our energy away from fighting denial, and start to take real action.
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wili
/ August 1, 2015Good point. It doesn’t need to be a common occurrence or the average temperature. Everyone not in AC (or some underground cavern) is dead after 6 hours.
How many of those who survive are going to want to wait around for the next one, not knowing whether their AC will go out in the middle of it, or whether there will be a black or brown out?
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umbrios27
/ August 2, 2015People live in places that flood every year, in places prone to vulcanic eruptions and earthquakes, in places were landslides are common place (I’ve once met a person who had rebuild her house in the same slope six times, even though she had also lost her parents, an uncle, a husband and two sons to those landslides.). Even if an event is lethal and commonplace, don’t underestimate the twin powers of desperation and apathy/inertia.
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Sunkensheep
/ August 3, 2015This is where I see the largest numbers of climate refugees comming from. The entire tropical pacific could support these kind of temperaures with only a few degrees of warming. All it would take is one such event combined with a an infrastructure failure (e.g citywide/regional electrical outage) for people to up and leave. Because no one can safely work outdoors, no one would be able to repair the damaged infrastructure.
Underground shelter may be a temporary solution, but is not practical in the long run with a worsening outlook. It is also impractical to build such shelter “after the fact”
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Leland Palmer
/ August 1, 2015I suspect that new inventions and social adaptations will arise to minimize this problem. Air conditioned mass shelters for humans is one possibility. Air conditioned barns for livestock, using solar powered air conditioning is another. Solar powered personal chillers, that circulate a fluid through tubes in direct contact with the skin is another possibility. Probably the most cost effective solution is just to migrate toward the high latitudes…a solution that could create major wars.
None of which minimizes the basic problem, of course. I can imagine people using their own personal solar powered chiller…facing nearly certain death after the sun goes down, and the batteries become discharged. Or people in a mass shelter, dependent on air conditioning…when the whole grid goes down due to air conditioning power demands. All such technological adaptations are possible – but will add to the cost of living in the affected areas.
It would be nice if the super rich and the fossil fuel corporations they control were legally liable for climate damages. So far, in American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, the Supreme Court of the U.S. has ruled just the opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Electric_Power_Co._v._Connecticut
It’s a measure of the extremely poor performance of our “free press” that people in the general population are not demanding legal parity for the fossil fuel corporations – that they be held legally liable for the damage they create, just like all other individuals and corporations.
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labmonkey2
/ August 1, 2015Frank Herbert wrote an excellent anthology (Dune) that mostly took place on a desert planet. The locals used a ‘stillsuit’ to distill moisture from their bodily functions for reuse. Not that I would like to live on a world where such extreme measures are standard practice, but as science fiction has occasionally proven to be science fact, this just may be our lot in life – returning to the caves from whence we came and hoarding water to survive.
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wili
/ August 1, 2015wrt “Solar powered personal chillers”
There are about a billion people who live on 1$/day, and another billion that live on $2. Most of these live in areas most likely to see these kinds of temperatures. How many are likely going to be able to afford “solar powered personal chillers”?
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015It’s a good point. Even if the cost could be brought down to 100 dollars each, that would still require hundreds of millions of dollars per year to keep them on hand for those areas most likely to be hit by such a heat/humidity wave.
For mass shelters, maybe it would be better to bring the humidity down using a desiccant that could be regenerated by solar energy- another existing form of solar air conditioning. Often these desiccant systems are coupled with swamp coolers. For reliability, fossil fuel or ethanol powered regeneration and electricity using backup generators might be required.
Even if we stop using fossil fuels right now, it’s likely that we will see such heat/humidity waves, due to the warming already in the pipeline. Likely adaptation efforts will be made, that will have some success…but make living or growing things in such areas more costly.
If we get several degrees C of warming, though, mass emigration toward the higher latitudes, likely generating wars, seems inevitable.
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umbrios27
/ August 2, 2015Do you known if these kinds of temperatures undermine the use of old techniques to lower temperatures, like cross-ventilation (and all the tricks to enhance it / source it from either low or high places where the air may be colder) allied to water features and half-buried, thick-walled buildings? Those kind of architectonics are labourous but can be made cheaply, and are already used in those parts of the world that are hottest, where the knowledge to make those things is traditional. It’s much easier to me to imagine people resorting to those tricks in mass again (until air conditioning became common place, those kind of buildings were widespread wherever high temperatures made life unconfortable) than using dune-esque clothing (the buildings are cheaper).
But I guess the high moisture content of the air would make this much more inneficient, and specially, if the difference of temperature between night/day and air/soil disappears, those tricks cease to work, so it depends on how bad things turn.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015Hi umbrios27-
It’s my guess that the thick walled passive solar stuff would work to some extent, but only if the high humidity could be kept out. I can imagine people baking bags of indicating silica gel desiccant in solar ovens, then sealing them and storing them for use in these heat/humidity events. Underground shelters would certainly help, I think, although I’d have to look up earth temperatures in these areas.
Arcologies – cities in one large building – could almost certainly be protected, by seasonal storage of cold water in an aquifer, if nothing else. Of course, the cost is prohibitive, I think.
It would almost certainly be possible to build mass shelters for large numbers of people, likely underground, using solar or conventional air conditioning and dehumidification. Redundant cooling, dehumidification, and power supply systems could be set in place, for a price, for short events. Of course, air conditioning dumps heat into the local environment and would make it harder on those not inside the shelter. And local ground temperatures will also slowly increase under global warming.
If we get 10 degrees C of global warming, though – kiss it off, I think. Huge areas are toast and are uninhabitable.
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umbrios27
/ August 3, 2015Thanks Leland Palmer,
I hope we stop things before 10oC, I can’t imagine much survival of anything in the megafauna in that kind of situation. I confess that when I though of architetural tricks to endure hot ambients I was thinking about how the fauna might endure also. In hot ambients some animals (specially avians, which have a harder time with heat than mammals) have the habit of resting in mud banks, termite mounds and the like during the hottest hours of day. I known that we are already in the Sixth Great Extinction no matter what, but if those kinds of tricks stop working… animals have a harder time migrating than humans.
The sillica gel trick is a neat idea, one that I hadn’t thought about. For humans, at least, it could save a lot of lifes. And in my experience, it wouldn’t even need solar ovens. When I used silica gel in my house (I now live in a drier house) regularly, fifteen minutes in direct sunlight here in the tropics were enough to dry it.
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Ed-M
/ August 3, 2015@Leland Palmer,
Even at 6 deg C large areas are toast and uninhabitable, I think. Russia, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, UK and Scandinavia will face unimaginable immigration pressures.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 5, 2015Hi umbrios27 and Ed-M
The desiccant idea might work, but I think now it would be better to leave the desiccant in place in an air tight bin and supply hot air to it with a hot air solar panel and a fan. That would allow a household to charge their desiccant bed without moving around hundreds of pounds of desiccant. Solar gel might not be the ideal desiccant.
As far as mass shelters go – people produce about a hundred watts of heat, and breathe out water vapor. Mass shelters would have to be sure they can handle that, and be ultra-reliable.
I’ve heard of a trick done in New York City, of filling a tub with cold water and climbing in it, when the heat and humidity become oppressive. This would work – until you run out of cold water.
If cities like Baghdad were to store water at night in the winter in a suitable aquifer, it might stay cold for months or years, if done in large enough volume. Don’t know if a suitable aquifer is available, though. If not, a big insulated reservoir might work, at a higher cost. A thin plastic tube could be wrapped around a human body, possibly starting with the head or chest, and a trickle of cold water run through it. This cold water supply could be piped to closely monitored locations throughout the city, and would likely stay pretty cold.
All you have to do is dissipate a hundred watts of heat, or maybe more for people that are stressed and excited. One hundred watts is about 86,000 calories per hour, or 86 KCal per hour. So, if cold water is increased in temperature by 10 degrees C, dissipating that much heat would require a cold water flow of 8.6 kg/hr, or say twice that for stressed and excited people, call it 20 kg/hr per person protected. So, for a week, day and night, that would require 3360 kg of water, to protect one person for a solid week.
Baghdad has about 3.841 million people, so I make that to be about 10,500 acre feet of cold water, for a solid week of protection for everyone. Not an insignificant amount, but Folsom Lake in California, a medium sized reservoir, contains about 25 times that much. The water could possibly be collected from the other end of the tube and go into the regular water supply.
So, one idea might be to collect seasonal runoff in the winter, and run it through shallow canals where it would loose heat by radiative cooling to the upper atmosphere, at night in the winter. Chill the water as much as possible, then store it in an underground aquifer or insulated reservoir, for use the next summer. Get the World Bank to finance it, if they will.
If we don’t get our fossil fuel problem fixed, any technological solutions are just delaying the inevitable, and may not be worth doing. If we turn the corner on fossil fuel usage, though, putting some protective system like this (or some better idea) in place might save lives and delay or prevent mass emigration. And, likely, no matter what, mass immigration pressures on high latitude countries including the U.S. are likely inevitable.
In reality, though, asking a city engaged in civil unrest exacerbated by global warming, with hundreds of thousands of homeless people to engage in peaceful, orderly cooperation during such a crisis may be be asking way too much. Or maybe not, if survival itself was at stake. Maybe Tehran could do it, dunno.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 5, 2015Uh, correction, make that “silica gel” (first paragraph) not “solar gel”.
Apparently, thermal storage in aquifers is not unknown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_thermal_energy_storage
Most systems contain a hot well and a cold well, and the water does tend to stay at the temperature it was injected at, in sufficient volume. So, the hot water heated by human body heat could be further heated using solar energy and used for heating in the winter, maybe. If heat pumps are used, something more like conventional air conditioning could result. Likely, many wells would be necessary.
Because temperature differences are low, pumping costs could be high, though. Heat pumps are generally used to amplify the temperature differences, at some energy cost.
Unlike conventional air conditioning, this seasonal heat storage could be managed to not dump heat into the local environment, I think, even if heat pumps are used to amplify the temperature differences.
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wili
/ August 1, 2015wrt legal liability, have you seen this? : http://icecoalition.com/
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015No, hadn’t heard about it (Ice Coalition – International Court for the Environment). It’s a great idea, but how to bring it about? A more achievable goal might be to get the World Court involved.
It’s a sure bet that the fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil will try to prevent or sabotage any effective action, based on past history. It’s going to be tough to regulate them and may in fact be impossible – if ExxonMobil was a country, its “GNP” (gross revenues) would make it the 30th largest economy in the world, greater than Thailand.
I just wish that the Supreme Court of the U.S. would live up to its constitutional responsibilities and overturn American Electric Power vs Connecticut. Instead, we’ve got a unanimous verdict that the Supreme Court can’t do anything until the Clean Air Act is repealed or modified – putting the responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases on the Executive. Worse yet, responsibility to modify the Clean Air Act resides in our massively corrupt Congress.
Sotomayor recused herself citing a potential conflict of interest, but Scalia and Thomas, who have in the past attended Federalist Society legal weekends at the Koch Brothers place in Palm Springs, did not. At those legal weekends the doctrines of strict constructionism and judicial restraint are the main topics, it seems – telling the Supreme Court justices that their hands are tied unless the Constitution specifically mandates they act. Unfortunately, at the time the Constitution was written, global warming was unknown.
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015As ever, the special interests of the wealthy take precedent. Health of the world’s climate system, extinction, and increasingly extreme weather displacing and threatening the lives of tens of millions of people. Not so much.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015Hi Robert-
Yes.
Maybe we need a Constitutional Amendment, mandating that the fossil fuel corporations and their wealthy stockholders be held legally accountable for global warming damages. It’s a long and complicated process, but one that can originate at the grass roots, I think.
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climatehawk1
/ August 1, 2015Tweet scheduled.
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GarryRogers
/ August 1, 2015Reblogged this on GarryRogers Nature Conservation and Science Fiction (#EcoSciFi).
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Jeremy
/ August 1, 2015Huge rains kill dozens in India and Myanmar.
Knowing how things are over there, it’s more likely to be hundreds than dozens.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33745840
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015– One more tragedy.
Firefighter Died After Being Trapped in Wind-Fueled Blaze
ALTURAS, Calif. — A firefighter killed by a wildfire in Northern California was scouting the area when he became trapped after erratic winds stoked the blaze, officials said Saturday.
U.S. Forest Service firefighter David Ruhl was driving down a Modoc National Forest road in a vehicle Thursday. The fire suddenly grew and trapped him, information officer Ken Sandusky said.
“He was trying to develop a plan of attack,” Sandusky said.
Ruhl, of Rapid City, South Dakota, had been on temporary assignment since June in California, where he was an assistant fire management officer for the Big Valley Ranger District of the Modoc National.
Scott Jacobson, a co-worker and spokesman for the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota, said Ruhl, 38, volunteered to work in California. He wanted to broaden his firefighting experience and improve his skills and was passionate about his job, Jacobson said.
“He was just always eager to get out and about and work with people,” he said.
The married father of two children…
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/08/01/us/ap-us-california-wildfires-firefighter-killed.html?_r=0
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015Governor Brown Declares State of Emergency in California to Bolster Wildfire Response
7-31-2015
SACRAMENTO – With wildfires burning across the state – exacerbated by severe drought conditions and extreme weather – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today declared a state of emergency in California to help mobilize additional firefighting and disaster response resources.
“California’s severe drought and extreme weather have turned much of the state into a tinderbox,” said Governor Brown. “Our courageous firefighters are on the front lines and we’ll do everything we can to help them.”
http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=19053
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015– 0801 1400 HRS PDX There are now milky white skies to the SE. that have been growing since yesterday.
8,500-acre Stouts Fire in Southern Oregon is growing, despite efforts of 800 firefighters
The fast-growing Stouts Fire southeast of Roseburg in rural Douglas County has grown to 8,500 acres, fire officials said Saturday.
More than 800 people, both wildland firefighters and others from the Portland metro area and other parts of the state, are working to contain the blaze.
Residents of about 35 homes in rural areas near Azalea were ordered to evacuate Friday. The fire grew by 2,000 acres to the south and the east overnight, officials said.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/08/8500_acre_stouts_fire_in_south.html
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015Our friend Cas in Lake County, California, has been evacuated due to the fire there.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 1, 2015Paradise burning, or why we all need to learn the word ‘anthropogenic’: Truthdig http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/paradise_burning_or_why_we_all_need_to_learn_the_word_20150730
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 1, 2015A media disclosure guide to industry-funded groups attacking EPA’s climate plan http://mm4a.org/1KEQ604
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015Fires and smoke in northern Alaska
Terra/MODIS
2015/211
07/30/2015
21:55 UTC
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015CHILD: Daddy, why is the rainforest burning?
PARENT: Hush now, my cherished child. Rainforests don’t burn.
CHILD: They do now.
###
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015CHILD: Mommy, why is Daddy such a knuckle head?
PARENT: Hush now, my cherished child.
Congress does all of his thinking for him these days.
CHILD: Oh.
#
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015CHILD: Mommy, what is Congress?
PARENT: Hush now, my cherished child. Congress is …?
Now, why don’t you busy yourself and go see who wants to be our next President.
CHILD: OK.
#
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dtlange
/ August 1, 2015#
CHILD: Guess what I found out Mommy?
PARENT: OK, my cherished child. Show me.
CHILD:
”Rick Santorum calls climate change “a beautifully concocted scheme.” Senator Ted Cruz contends that no climate change has been recorded in the last 15 years, bluntly declaring, “It hasn’t happened.” Ben Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon, has said, “We may be warming. We may be cooling.” Former Florida governor Jeb Bush grants that climate change is real, but he is unwilling to say it is caused by humans. Donald Trump, meanwhile, sees a conspiracy: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing noncompetitive.”
#
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2015/07/31/climate/vvpdEJjNbkkIvbbhJ3pxlO/story.html
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015Pacific Northwest on Track for Warmest Summer on Record
Another heat wave has engulfed much of the U.S. Pacific Northwest the past few days with Seattle, Washington now having observed eleven 90°+ temperatures so far this summer, an all-time record (9 such days in 1958 was the previous) and also July has been their warmest month ever observed. For some of the cities in the Northwest this has been the warmest June-July period ever measured and, barring a very cool August, will end up being the warmest climatological summer on record (June-August). Here are some details.
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015The Columbia River is running at its lowest level in almost 60 years for this time of the year, threatening the annual sockeye salmon run.
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Ryan in New England
/ August 1, 2015I found this interesting, in a typically depressing way. Most young people in Florida have no clue about the risks they face from hurricanes.
http://www.wunderground.com/news/most-floridians-unconcerned-hurricane-threat-poll
If they have no idea what kind of damage a hurricane can (and eventually will) do, they probably also have no clue how dire their future looks from climate change fueled extreme events.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 1, 2015From Dr. Masters site-
This fellow is keeping a close eye on this
425. StormTrackerScott
11:41 PM GMT on August 01, 2015
Atmospheric conditions are now in Super El-Nino state. SST’s across equatorial Pacific will likely soon follow.
Michael Ventrice@MJVentrice 7h7 hours ago
WOW… the atmospheric response to El Nino is growing to a 4 standard deviation event in August. Just incredible
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Ryan in New England
/ August 1, 2015And the heat in the Pacific Northwest has produced records for the month of July.
http://www.wunderground.com/news/northwest-northeast-heat-late-july-early-august
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Rainfall Accumulation Across the United States (1/1/2015 – 7/16/2015)
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015From Russia With Magma
What a volcanic explosion 250 million years ago tells us about climate change.
Along with the carbon and sulfur, which we had expected, we found surprisingly high levels of fluorine and chlorine in these rocks. These levels could not have come from melting in the Earth’s mantle; they had to come (as we subsequently proved) from the sedimentary rocks and hydrocarbon reservoirs that the magmas traveled through and rested in on their way to the surface. Thus these normally quiet flood basalt lavas carried and released a world of trouble into the end-Permian atmosphere. And that trouble came in the form of halocarbons, the same family of chemicals now banned by international treaties because they were destroying our ozone layer. Work by Ben Black, Jeff Kiehl, Jean-Francois Lamarque, and Christine Shields at the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed that the halocarbons released by the Siberian flood basalts would have destroyed as much as 70 percent of the Earth’s ozone, worldwide. And the sulfur compounds would have made rain in the northern hemisphere as acidic as lemon juice.
Link
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Leland Palmer
/ August 3, 2015Hi Colorado Bob:
Any time I see an article coming up with an new improved explanation for the End Permian, I get a little suspicious. The existing theories involving methane hydrate dissociation have a huge amount of consistent evidence supporting them.
Dunno about the original research on the halocarbons, but the Slate article seems altogether too cheery about massive global warming. If the sun is a typical star astrophysicists tell us it’s a couple of percent hotter now than it was during the End Permian, an effect Hansen says is equivalent to about 1000 ppm of CO2.
Quote:
“Yes, temperatures and carbon dioxide contents like these have existed in Earth’s past, and no, they will not wipe out life on Earth.
Humans, however, have never had to live under those conditions, and we are unlikely to enjoy them. But this need not be a depressing story, or a moment to sigh and turn the page and think of something else—this is a moment when we are given a prime opportunity to step forward socially and scientifically. Here we are faced with a challenge worthy of our talents.”
End quote.
No, we don’t know that massive global warming on the scale of the End Permian will not wipe out life on earth. We know that the End Permian wiped out on the order of 90 percent of all species – certainly more than 99 percent of all individual organisms, I think.
There may be a tipping point when the oceans start to boil and the oceans end up in the atmosphere, like Hansen says. We don’t know where that threshold is, or at least I don’t. Finding out is an experiment that can only be done once.
Global warming is a solvable avoidable problem – although perhaps not under the existing economic and political structure. Changing those systems so that we don’t unnecessarily risk the biosphere is a challenge worthy of our talents.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 7, 2015Hi again, Colorado Bob:
Sorry to hear about your friend, Colorado Bob. Thanks for your great work in keeping the rest of us “in the loop” .
That Slate article has me ticked off, though. Global warming is a challenge worthy of our talents, indeed!!! What disastrous pride. What hubris, to try to predict possibly runaway positive feedback effects!
Sounds like some of that conservative think tank crap about creative destruction, or some of that truly outrageous (treason against the human race) disaster capitalism. .
Another real wildcard in the calculation of whether low level runaway global warming will destroy the biosphere are the oceanic and especially atmospheric chemistry effects of methane release from the hydrates. Methane is a strong reducing agent, like something left over from the primordial atmosphere, before the oxygen revolution.
Methane release can exhaust both the atmospheric and oceanic oxidation capacities of the earth. In the atmosphere, methane exhausts the hydroxyl radical oxidation mechanism, increasing its lifetime and greenhouse potential It has other nasty atmospheric effects, such that large releases can multiply its greenhouse effect by hundreds of percent.
Isaksen – Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming from Arctic methane emissions:
Click to access IsaksenGB2011.pdf
In the oceans, methane release can exhaust the oxidation capacity of entire ocean basins, leading to direct release of methane from the hydrates to the atmosphere, according to the now apparently defunct IMPACTS group of national labs and universities, studying abrupt climate change. Why was IMPACTS quietly de-funded, by the way? Is this a case of too much truth bothering the powerful?
We also don’t know what the global methane hydrate inventory is. The oil corporations likely do know, but this is proprietary information, and corporations involved in extraction often do minimize known reserves, to minimize difficulties in obtaining leases. Estimates range from 0.4 to about 77 trillion tons of carbon in the methane hydrates – a huge range.
There’s a published estimate, working from the carbon isotope excursion at the end of the Triassic, that something like 17 trillion tons of carbon was released to the atmosphere by methane hydrate dissociation during that mass extinction event – rather slowly, in stages.
What if we have that much methane hydrate, but it’s all released at once?
Also, water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, with an amazingly complex infrared spectrum. Water vapor concentration in the atmosphere is a function of temperature – any heating from any source, be it CO2, methane, the ice albedo feedback, methane and CO2 release from melting permafrost, nitrogen oxides, or whatever will increase water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. I can imagine water vapor infrared absorption rising like a tide, closing off the last few infrared radiation windows, as the oceans boil and the oceans end up in the atmosphere.
Slate should commit journalistic seppuku for publishing this crap.
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robindatta
/ August 2, 2015Online wetbulb temperature calgulator:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/epz/?n=wxcalc_dewpoint
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Griffin
/ August 2, 2015Not sure if anyone else has seen the massive bloom off the coast of NJ from today’s satellite shot but it really does not look like a good thing for us to be seeing.
http://map2.vis.earthdata.nasa.gov/image-download?TIME=2015213&extent=-74.40832223869668,38.84628424342444,-71.88586130119668,41.22372564967444&epsg=4326&layers=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Coastlines&opacities=1,1&worldfile=false&format=image/jpeg&width=1148&height=1082
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Griffin
/ August 2, 2015It has actually been around for a few days. I am by no means any kind of an expert but that just does not look right to me.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 2, 2015Not an expert, either. This is NASA Worldview for July 31st, with the chlorophyll A absorption line data product turned on. This seems to help locate these blooms – when you turn it off, the bloom is still visible there. Past data can be seen using the time controls along the bottom of the page, and data products can be shown or turned off using the layers menu on the left. The image can be zoomed using the controls on the upper right.
http://1.usa.gov/1E3ltd4
Worldwide, the chlorophyll A absorption images seem to show a lot of eutrotrophication,especially along the coasts of the U.S., in the Arctic along the coastlines and in Europe in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea among other places. This pretty much corresponds to the maps of the oxygen dead zones we have been seeing.
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Timothy Chase
/ August 2, 2015An embarrassing article from the Telegraph:
Rothwell mentioned heat index at a couple of points, but keeps referring to the heat index as the temperature.
But what bothered me the most about this what his referring to a “heat dome” as something which “passes over” a place. Heat domes don’t pass over – they settle.
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Timothy Chase
/ August 2, 2015Highs and lowers for the next week in Celsius (Used Google which gave Weather.com in Celsius) Sun 44°C 30°C Mon 44°C 30°C Tue 45°C 29°C Wed 44°C 30°C Thu 46°C 31°C Fri47°C 31°C Sat 47°C 32°C Sun 47°C 32°C.
Not quite the same location, but humidity on Monday in Mahshahr (Iran) is supposed to be 100% from 1:20 PM – 7:30 PM their time. Fortunately humidity will drop later in the week during the string of three days at 47°C.
You can get the humidity here:
http://www.wunderground.com/ir/mahshahr?MR=1 if you click on customize. They are showing 116°F 116°F 117°F 117°F for Friday through Monday of next week in Mahshahr.
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Timothy Chase
/ August 2, 2015CORRECTION
“Highs and lowers…” should have been “Highs and lows…”
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015Brutal. Just absolutely brutal.
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Ed-M
/ August 3, 2015Ya know — if all the people die off in the MENA districts due to excessive heat and humidity from AGW — who’s going to pump “our” oil?
Jess’ sayin’…
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015They also seem shamefully gleeful about it…
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Syd Bridges
/ August 2, 2015That’s the Torygraph for you. Run by two tax-avoiding propeerty billionaires. And it is supposedly one of the “quality” newspapers.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015The 10 day forecast for Baghdad –
Sun – 118F / 88F
Mon – 120F / 88F
Tue – 121F / 90F
Wed – 123F / 93F
Thu – 121F / 91F
Fri – 121F / 90F
Sat – `119F / 87F
Sun – 116F / 86F
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Yesterday –
Baghdad, Iraq, Is Hottest City in World With Temperatures at 120 Degrees
Link
Today it was 120F.
Given the sate Iraq is in , we’re looking at a serious mass casualty event this month .
There’s over 300,000 people living on the street in Baghdad.
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Andy in SD
/ August 2, 2015The power grid is very shaky as well. This can cascade rapidly into the young / elderly / unfit population. Throw some humidity into the mix and ouch!
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Carole
/ August 3, 2015Baghdad for the next 2 weeks: http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/iraq/baghdad.
Human body temperature is 36.8C
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Andy in SD
/ August 2, 2015Thailand Drought
Water rationing is taking place in nearly a third of the country as water in dams has shrunk by 10 percent. Bangkok has cut outflows from four major dams in the Chao Phraya River basin by more than 30 percent.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/16/Severe-drought-in-Thailand-leading-to-water-shutdowns/1691437064505/
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Thanks Andy –
This theme of a dividing line is really clear now. They are swimming for their lives just west of there. Just a few years ago , Thailand had the worst floods ever.
“As a system nears a tipping point , it moves to the extremes.”
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Thanks again Andy –
Another example –
Fish are are being cooked in the Columbia drainage, and Oklahoma and Indiana are seeing the wettest year on record.
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Andy in SD
/ August 2, 2015“As a system nears a tipping point , it moves to the extremes.”
Yup. So much so fast now.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Oklahoma has gone from the worst drought on record to the wettest year on record. In just 3 or 4 years. This is not a stable system.
This is nature about reorganize it;s self.
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Andy in SD
/ August 2, 2015If you ignore the obvious eye magnets (the fires) and check out the coastline in the ocean. Does that greenish discoloration look like algae blooms to anyone else?
http://www.arctic.io/explorer/24/2015-07-31/6-N43.5498-W124.97607
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015Red tide…
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015The tell tale signs of the theory are pouring in.
We will be in a much different state Much sooner than ever dreamed
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Miep
/ August 2, 2015I remember being completely convinced I’d be dead before all this came down. Now it seems like it’s just around the corner.
I am sorry about your friend. Real friends are rare.
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Ed-M
/ August 3, 2015Yes, I thought I would be dead by then, too, even if I lived to be 80. I’m 54 now.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Yep, and soot landing on the the ocean is “:food”.
09:40 UTC
Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea
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Leland Palmer
/ August 3, 2015Yes, red tide / algae bloom.
Here’s NASA Worldview for the same date, with the Chlorophyl A data product layer turned on:
http://1.usa.gov/1KKMZB1
This (maybe not quite as bad) has been going on along the Oregon/Washington coast for weeks, looking at Worldview.
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dtlange
/ August 3, 2015Good spot with the chlorophyll layering. It’s what makes plants ‘green’.
Often seen in nutrient rich environments — usually signalling Nitrogen is present in abundance. Warming water helps growth.
Either way the chemistry of the ocean is heading in a dangerous direction via FF.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Santana – No one to depend on
I buried my last great friend this week
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015I am heart broken .
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015You carry them with you now. That is your sacred trust. Not an easy thing. But they lived and live on in you.
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Andy in SD
/ August 2, 2015Makes one kinda feel this way….45 years later ,Ten Years After seems prophetic….
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 201545 years years ago I was coming down the West side of Rabbitt Ears Pass into Steamboat.
There was an 18 wheeler . ,Them a car next to him Then a jackass.
We all passed each other
I was tired , I was right on the white strip
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Andy in SD
The world as it was, Good luck with the past,
Lone Wati –
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Jeremy
/ August 2, 2015Iraqi children dying in the heat :-((
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/31072015
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Jeremy
/ August 2, 2015Worst Flood In 200 Years Hits India’s Troubled State Manipur – goes almost completely unreported!
http://www.countercurrents.org/chandra010815.htm
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robertscribbler
/ August 3, 2015I’ve got my work cut out for me tomorrow…
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015I watched the new PBS show on Uranium 235. In the 1930’s , Jews led the research. in Germany.
They warned that Hitler would get the “bomb’. When we got there , he was a thousand years away. Why ? Because this was all “Jewish” science.
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Colorado Bob
/ August 2, 2015Back to the “Jewish” science, in Germany, in 1945.
We had spent 2 Billion dollars on the ” device “.
And another 3 Billion on the plane to fly it to anywhere we wanted.
They had spent about 29 cents. Remember it was “Jewish” science, does all this ring bell ?
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Mark from New England
/ August 3, 2015Yup, now it’s ‘liberal’ science. I hate how climate change has become politicized. It’ll be the doom of our species if we can’t overcome our evolutionary tendency towards tribal thinking.
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Jeremy
/ August 2, 2015“Toxic Floods From Coal Mines and Power Plants Hit Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site”
http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/31/vietnam-floods/
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Jeremy
/ August 2, 2015“Myanmar’s president headed to devastated rural regions where a state of emergency was declared after deadly monsoon rains displaced tens of thousands of people, flooded swathes of rice paddy and prompted fears of dams collapsing.”
http://www.trust.org/item/20150801114618-b6mdd/?source=fiOtherNews2
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Jeremy
/ August 2, 2015“Flood situation in south Bengal turned grim on Saturday with 1.19 lakh people taking shelter in relief camps in 12 districts of the state even as weatherman forecast more heavy rains in the next two days.”
FYI – 1 lakh = 100,000
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bengal-flood-situation-turns-grim-1-19-lakh-people-affected/articleshow/48310181.cms
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dtlange
/ August 2, 2015Israel Energy Use Breaks Record High in Heat Wave
Israelis have broken the nation’s record for energy consumption in this week’s heat wave.
(August 2) as a massive heat wave hit the region, escalating in the afternoon to new highs.
Electricity usage in the Jewish State peaked at 3:30 pm in the afternoon to 12,525 megawatts. This left a reserve of approximately 900 megawatts, according to the Israel Electric Corporation – a very slim margin indeed.
The previous record for peak summer consumption was reached at 11,880 megawatts on July 19, 2012.
The all-time record high usage – for all weather, all seasons and all times – was reached this year at 11,930 megawatts on January 12, 2015.
The new all-time all-season usage record was set on Sunday at 12,525 megawatts
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/israel-energy-use-breaks-record-high-in-heat-wave/2015/08/02/
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wili
/ August 2, 2015Sooo, how were the folks in the Gaza strip handling the heat?
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robertscribbler
/ August 2, 2015Let’s hope we don’t start seeing region-wide power outages…
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mlparrish
/ August 2, 2015Robert,
Scratch that post. I got it. It appears to be a brief period of an unusually high dewpoint in Bandar Mahshar. Sorry.
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Ryan in New England
/ August 3, 2015Yet another symptom of the madness we’ve descended into. Injecting fracking wastewater into aquifers that provide L.A.’s drinking water. I’m sure many of you heard about this when it first emerged in news, but now the results of studies intended to determine if wastewater has contaminated drinking water are not being released.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/07/31/thousands-california-injection-wells-might-be-polluting-la-s-drinking-water-state-won-t-release-results-investigation
It’s the 21st century and we somehow still don’t understand that we require clean water for basic survival!?
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Ryan in New England
/ August 3, 2015Robert, here’s some good news to compliment your recent post on losses and bankruptcies in the oil industry. The same is occurring in the natural gas side of the market. Gas producers are suffering big losses (wonderful!). This article also points out how one of the biggest companies doesn’t make money producing, but rather buying and selling leases after inflating the numbers about recoverable amounts of gas. Coal, oil and gas are all struggling to hold onto power, while renewables just keep getting more efficient and affordable. Take away subsidies for FF and they’d be just fossils in no time.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/08/02/once-burned-twice-shy-utica-shale-touted-investors-shale-drillers-continue-posting-losses
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Abel Adamski
/ August 3, 2015Food for thought
Refracking is an increasing technology for reduced output wells, further drilling and fracturing and injecting existing wells. The big dollars were spent initially, refracking is very cheap.
https://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/the-future-of-fracking-is-re-fracking
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Ryan in New England
/ August 3, 2015And like I just mentioned, energy produced by renewables keeps growing. Recent projections of growth in renewables has led to the increase in energy produced by renewables in the President’s recent attempt at lowering CO2 emissions.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/surging-renewable-energy-frames-epa-climate-rules-19305
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Andy in SD
/ August 3, 2015It is not just drought affecting our food supply, deluges are causing problems as well.
Some crops falter in record rains
Weeks of record rainfalls drenched Don Lamb’s cornfields this summer, drowning some plants and leaving others yellowed, 2 feet tall and capable of producing little, if any, grain.
The 48-year-old central Indiana farmer can’t recall anything like the deluges he’s seen from late May on this summer; the latest was a 4-inch downpour a week ago. Neither can his father, who’s been farming for 50 years.
East central Illinois farmer Mark Henrichs isn’t sure whether the crippling rains, which came three years after a devastating drought, might be tied to changes climate scientists have predicted global warming might bring. But the 58-year-old knows they were highly unusual.
http://www.commercial-news.com/news/local_news/some-crops-falter-in-record-rains/article_76aa8fab-4e42-52a9-af6b-2b76373ef3c5.html
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Colorado Bob
/ August 3, 2015Scientists fear toxic algae bloom spreading on Pacific coast
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The toxic algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean stretching from southern California to Alaska — already the largest ever recorded — appear to have reached as far as the Aleutian Islands, scientists say.
“The anecdotal evidence suggests we’re having a major event,” said Bruce Wright, a scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, the federally recognized tribal organization of Alaska’s native Aleuts. “All the populations [of marine mammals] are way down in the Aleutians.”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/1/scientists-fear-toxic-algae-bloom-continues-to-spread.html
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dtlange
/ August 3, 2015– Profound… and scary.
– A nutrient rich environment via FF combustion.
– Warm water helps too.
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labmonkey2
/ August 3, 2015Refugees continue attempts to gain access to the Channel Tunnel from the France side and reach England. Things will not get any better with time, I’m afraid.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11778610/Watch-Over-200-migrants-breach-Euro-Tunnel-fences.html
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redskylite
/ August 3, 2015This article in Dawn (Pakistan) on Climate Change and malnutrition caught my attention today ..
“Climate change is putting human security in terms of food and calorie availability and consumption at risk, especially for the vulnerable poor”
http://www.dawn.com/news/1197981/climate-change-and-malnutrition
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redskylite
/ August 3, 2015This years floods in the Sindh taking a toll . . . .
http://www.dawn.com/news/1198120/11-die-in-kp-as-number-of-people-marooned-in-sindh-increases
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Jeremy
/ August 3, 2015“Heavy monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people in India in the past week and forced tens of thousands of people to take shelter in state-run relief camps, India’s home ministry has said.
A cyclone struck the worst-hit state of West Bengal, where 48 people have been killed and nearly 215,000 villagers have been taken to relief camps after heavy rains triggered flooding, the ministry statement said.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/monsoon-rains-leave-100-dead-in-india
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Nuwan
/ August 3, 2015http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/08/arctic-sea-ice-collapse-threatens-update-3.html
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rustj2015
/ August 3, 2015In the midst of the chaotic, there are whorls of positive effect:
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2967633/the_7_trillion_solar_tsunami_in_our_midst.html
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Robert in New Orleans
/ August 3, 2015Wet-bulb temperature limit for human body. Paul Beckwith Video
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Abel Adamski
/ August 20, 2015As it rolls along
http://climatecrocks.com/2015/08/19/middle-east-in-climate-cross-hairs/#more-24933
While the temperature was “only” 115 degrees, the dew point was an unfathomable 90 degrees. On Thursday, the Iranian city of about 100,000 reached a heat index of 154
On Feb. 19, 2014, The Associated Press reported from Iran: “The first cabinet decision made under Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, wasn’t about how to resolve his country’s nuclear dispute with world powers. It was about how to keep the nation’s largest lake from disappearing. Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on earth, has shrunk more than 80 percent to … (nearly 400 square miles) in the past decade, mainly because of climate change, expanded irrigation for surrounding farms and the damming of rivers that feed the body of water, experts say.
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nickcayman
/ May 25, 2016Reblogged this on Renewable Energy for SIDS.
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