
July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded - yawz
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201507
======
ams6110
Since 1880

Edit: I normally don't react to downvotes but this is a direct quote. Larger
context: _this was also the all-time highest monthly temperature in the
1880–2015 record, at 61.86°F (16.61°C), surpassing the previous record set in
1998 by 0.14°F (0.08°C)_

~~~
stevewepay
How exactly do they do a fair comparison between 1880 and today? I'm assuming
the temperature readings today are very accurate, but how accurate were the
measuring devices going back in history, and their standards for taking
temperature? Most of the thermometers I have in my house are +- 2F, which
would eliminate the differences entirely.

~~~
cryptoz
There are significant temperature records that go back much farther than 1880
even. Many navies and armies kept records from all over the world, so we
actually have lots more data than people think. There are also bodies of
science that deal with 'aftcasting', which is making a weather forecast for a
date in the past. These techniques have been refined to the point where we can
make 1-day aftcasts for ~1850 that are comparable to modern 2-3 day weather
forecasts in terms of accuracy, even with the limited data available (things
like barometric pressure readings from ships).

I'm not sure about the technology used at the time, but the basic answer to
your question that that they had a lot more thermometers than you expect,
distributed globally too. And as we're discussing global averages, the noise
about +-2F in your house isn't really the same problem.

Edit: Here's a neat 100-year reanalysis paper if you're interested. Abstract
link here, full pdf available on the page:
[http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-87-2-175](http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-87-2-175).
"Feasibility of a 100-Year Reanalysis Using Only Surface Pressure Data"

~~~
rnovak
To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in
my area, are _horribly inaccurate_. In my state, it's a common joke that being
a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the
time, and still keep your job.

Seriously, our forecasts are nearly always wrong. So.....saying we can make
_as accurate_ of forecasts for 200 years ago...that's not really saying much.

This is after moving to two cities in the same state, more than 100 miles
apart, the forecasts still _never get better_.

~~~
criley2
>To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in
my area, are horribly inaccurate. In my state, it's a common joke that being a
meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the
time, and still keep your job.

Meteorologists lower the quality of the data they receive.

People don't want bad news. People don't want to hear that it's going to rain
on their weekend. People won't tune in to hear constant bad news.

So meteorologists take the positive and optimistic side.

The reality of forecasting is that much of the data, models, the warnings, are
all created by the NWS.

The further you get from real NWS data, the lower the quality tends to be.
It's like a game of telephone, except with forecasting.

National forecasters like The Weather Channel utilize tons of NWS data and
models, and present it in a more friendly way. Generally there is a loss of
quality here (and, when you look at TWC's buzzfeed approach to weather, it's
not hard to see why they might respect clicks above all else).

Then, further down the pipe, away from the NWS and the actual source, away
from National broadcasters, we get to local broadcasters. Once again, these
guys are largely relying on upstream info, just packaging for the local
audience.

It's not surprising that local meteorologists provide the lowest quality
forecasting, because that's not really their job to provide highly accurate
forecasting. Their job is actually to keep you watching through a commercial
break, so the show remains on-air. The NWS is the service whose job is it to
accurately forecast.

~~~
mikeash
Another big problem is that people don't understand uncertainty, and therefore
forecasters don't express uncertainty.

For example, just look at whatever near-term forecast you have handy. What are
the forecast high and low temperatures for the next few days? What are the
error bars on those highs and lows?

Oh, you couldn't find error bars? Yeah.

~~~
leni536
That's why I always check radar map forecasts. They forecast rain everywhere
in my area but not at my exact spot? Yeah, I take my umbrella.

------
jedberg
Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched
from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global
warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?

~~~
patrickaljord
I don't think it's called global warming anymore, it's called climate change.
Besides, I don't understand why it's ok for liberals to make fun of
conservatives using "extreme snow" during winter as an argument against
climate change but that liberals using exceptional heat during summer as an
argument for climate change is ok. A few months of extra cold or heat is not
enough to prove or disprove climate change. Last year we had an unusual cold
summer, was that proof that climate change is not happening? We already have
good scientific ways to measure climate change, let's stick to these (carbon
emission etc).

I think we should start focusing on real solutions. Many conservatives are
right to underline that simply increasing taxes is not the solution. So what's
the solution? Innovation in new source of renewable or less polluting energy
technologies. Both liberals and conservatives tend to agree here but they
diverge in methodology. Liberals want to heavily tax fossil and subsidize
renewable energy. Problem with that is that taxing fossil make life and the
economy harder in the meantime and subsidizing often goes to cronies which is
bad for innovation. Conservatives prefer having better environment for
businesses which will boost innovation. Maybe there's some middle ground in
there.

~~~
downandout
_> I don't think it's called global warming anymore, it's called climate
change._

Global warming and climate change are one in the same. "Global warming" became
the rallying cry for so many environmentalist quacks citing bunk science -
people like Al Gore were universally skewered in the mainstream media - that
it was toxic from a PR perspective. So they came up with a new term. "Climate
change" has the exact same beliefs, political backers, scientists, corporate
interests, and studies behind it as "global warming". It's just a new name.

 _> I think we should start focusing on real solutions._

The issue is that there is no scientific evidence that solutions are possible.
The earth has gone through many dramatic "climate change/global warming"
events, and these last occurred long before cars or other man-made pollutants
existed. It will go through them again, regardless of how many carbon taxes
are levied by liberals or Tesla's are sold. It's just a reality - mankind will
eventually cease to exist on this planet regardless of what it does or does
not do.

~~~
yongjik
There must be a name for in-the-end-everybody-dies-so-why-bother logical
fallacy...

(For some reason, these same people are often pretty worried about the state
of the economy. Nations have fallen since the beginning of history, and in the
end every business and every nation collapse, so why don't we just let them
fail and see if the next one is better?)

~~~
downandout
It's quite a bit different. Economies were invented by people, are controlled
by people, and therefore can be altered by people. The environment, however,
has none of these characteristics. This is not a "logical fallacy" \- it's
simply a fact that the environmentalists of the world don't like very much and
have spent billions of dollars (mostly of other people's money- i.e. your tax
dollars) trying to get people to ignore.

There is indeed a logical fallacy playing out in all of this, and that of
course is that environmentalists/liberals are attempting to control something
that all of the credible scientific evidence says we can't control.
Controlling the universe, as it turns out, is much harder than bribing
legislators to use the government resources to pursue one's agenda.

~~~
yongjik
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)

Mankind has been altering environments since when they only had stone tools.
Your argument is basically, "I don't believe modern humans (with its 7+
billion population and sustained alteration of the majority of land area) have
any noticeable effect on the Earth's ecosystem, therefore scientists who say
so are wrong."

Stop being so willfully ignorant.

~~~
downandout
So your argument is that the ice age did not occur....how could it have, since
the T-Rex did not have fossil fuels to burn, and fossil fuels are the source
of all climate change events? Got it.

~~~
yongjik
There's so many logical and factual errors that my head hurts. But for a
start: the K-T extinction event (which wiped out the dinosaurs) was caused by
an asteroid impact. Ice age, if there ever was one at that time, only played a
secondary role.

And yes, all scientists (at least sane ones) would agree that, if a several-
kilometer-across ball of rock and iron falls from the sky, it will have such a
disastrous consequence on the climate (among other things, including "staying
alive" for most people) that our modern Global Warming will look like a summer
picnic in comparison.

...which is basically non sequitur.

I'm not even sure why you brought up dinosaurs.

------
cryptoz
Climate change is the biggest problem of our time. I wish there were more
startups focused on solving it - there are so many opportunities to make money
here while improving the world at a global scale. Mitigating the effects of
climate change for businesses could easily be worth $1T+. More VCs should pay
attention to these opportunities, and more startup founders should enter this
space.

~~~
mturmon
Here is a proof of your concept. The Climate Corporation
([https://www.climate.com](https://www.climate.com)) is a SF based company
founded in 2006 by two ex-Googlers. Its purpose is to help agriculture adapt
to climate change. It was acquired by Monsanto in 2013 for $1.1B.

[ETA: I had a feeling you knew this, and indeed while I was writing, you
captured this info below as well. Hope your project is going well.]

~~~
scarmig
Another proof of concept: Opower
([http://opower.com/careers](http://opower.com/careers)) is a DC- and SF-based
company. It uses behavioral science to drive increases in energy efficiency
among consumers, a competency it sells to utilities who use it to meet
government EE regulations.

~~~
jeromeflipo
This is mainly marketing, to help utilities improve their reputation
(according to Opower's employees I've met this year).

------
werber
I'm glad they're some tangential evidence to back up my month long moaning,
"It's like literally never been this hot before".

~~~
elektromekatron
Unless you were continent hopping all month, I'm afraid it doesn't.

------
atourgates
Is it possible to separate the warming that's caused by man-made pollution/CO2
from the earth's natural cycles?

Obviously, we're getting warmer because of pollution, but is that on-top of a
natural warming cycle? Being partially counteracted by a natural cooling
cycle? Could we all be saved by an ice-age?

~~~
teraflop
There's a ton of information about the available science, from high-level
overviews all the way down to nitty-gritty technical details, in the periodic
reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They're
published every several years, and the most recent one is from 2014.

A good place to start is the so-called synthesis report, which covers a
mixture of physical science, human impact and public policy. Page 6 of the
"summary for policymakers" includes a graph showing that although the error
bars are still pretty big, the observed warming is consistent with estimates
of human-caused effects, and vastly larger than can be explained by the
"natural cycles" we know about.

[https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-
report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...](https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-
report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf)

------
marcusgarvey
For those who believe that climate change is real, and a significant threat to
our longevity on this planet, would you please view / read this and share your
thoughts?

[http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=...](http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14473)

I don't believe defeatism is helpful, but I got a very Prince "Party Like It's
1999" feeling after consuming this. What should we do? If we pull all the
fossil fuels out of our economy tomorrow, everything will crash. Not to
mention that there is zero political will to even contemplate this. So what
should we do?

~~~
mikeash
What we should do is transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as is
reasonably possible. Not simply pull them all at once, because that won't help
anything as you say, but start moving smartly in that direction. Fortunately
we already are, even if not as quickly as we'd like. I think in the next few
years we'll see rapid change as solar panels and batteries become cheap enough
to compete with traditional energy on their own terms.

I don't see the case for human extinction here. Your link mentions it, but
doesn't appear to lay out the case at all, so I don't know what that statement
is based on, but I don't see how it would occur. The potential disruption due
to climate change is immense, but people will survive. The problem is not how
to keep humanity alive, but how to keep civilization going without some sort
of major backslide, and without getting a couple of billion people killed.

~~~
marcusgarvey
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. As for this point: >I think in the next few
years we'll see rapid change as solar panels and batteries become cheap enough
to compete with traditional energy on their own terms.

I'm unsure how the recent slide in oil prices is effecting the comparative
competitiveness of fossils vs. renewables. Not helpful, I imagine.

~~~
mikeash
When it comes to electricity generation, I don't think oil prices affect it
much. Oil isn't cost competitive for electricity as it stands.

The fall in natural gas prices _is_ affecting it, since natural gas is
competitive for electrical generation. But coal still rules when it comes to
cheap electricity, as long as you ignore the externalities of course.

I think what's going to happen is that pretty soon, solar plus storage will be
price competitive even with coal. Then there will be a big shift. It's
unlikely that the price of coal will drop much.

------
Zikes
That's what they said last month! Get your story straight, scientists!

------
leni536
I would really like to see a graph of the mean temperature of the hottest
month in each year, so we can see how this trend compares to noise.

~~~
bjwbell
It's difficult even with that. The mean temperature is calculated via
inference (obviously you can't have a thermometer everywhere). And there's
occasional adjustments to how the global temp. is inferred. The NOAA recently
did one [0].

They have a nice comparison list of the ten warmest years [1].

[0]
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/pag...](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/page-1/)

[1]
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/pag...](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/5/supplemental/page-3)

~~~
leni536
That's interesting, should be hard to not introduce a systematic error.

~~~
bjwbell
That's why I prefer the data from satellite measurements.

There's a couple for surface temperature at
[http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/](http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/) &
[http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-
temperature](http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature).

------
claar

        Data: Hottest month ever!
        Group A: Weather != Climate.
    
        Data: Coldest month ever!
        Group B: Weather != Climate.
    

Round and round we go.

~~~
teraflop
That's a bit of a false comparison. Most of the "coldest ever" headlines that
you'll see are talking about particular locations or regions, which have
extremely high variance. If you look at enough different subsets of your data,
you're bound to find both high and low extremes _somewhere_. But this article
is talking about a global average, which is much less noisy.

When you look at global average temperatures over a comparable span of time
(since ~1880), every year in the last couple of decades has been pretty close
to a record high. The last record low was more than a century ago.
[http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/)

------
stillsut
This is to be expected during an El Nino year. Let's see how big it gets!

------
pbreit
I suspect that, man-made or not, we are past the point of being able to "fix"
it and probably just need to adapt.

------
viach
Good job guys, you better find a way to reach these earth-like planets faster.

------
elektromekatron
I find it continually amazing how many people find NASA sending rockets into
space all the time to be an expected and everyday part of modern life, but
then don't trust them with a thermometer.

~~~
scarmig
Temperature measurement is a hard problem, hard enough you could write a PhD
on it. Asking questions about methods etc. is entirely acceptable.

The issue is when people refuse to recognize that thousands of scientists have
made this their career, and thousands of PhDs actually have been written on
temperatures past and present, and think that talking heads on Fox News
reciting memos paid for by fossil fuel companies contain even the semblance of
a real critique.

~~~
pgrote
> Asking questions about methods etc. is entirely acceptable.

I am fascinated by the topic of temperature collection methods through the
years. Is there an easily digestible source with explanations?

~~~
scarmig
Not that I know of, unfortunately--most of what I know I've gleaned from
conversations with a brother who works in the field, and from
[http://realclimate.org/](http://realclimate.org/) , which has some decent
technical information for a blog (but unfortunately has declined a bit IMO).

------
Carrok
It's interesting to me that if you say "today was hotter than any day on
record" The answer given always seems to be global warming. However if you say
"today was colder than any day on record" (also happens very frequently) the
answer given is "That's weather, not climate."

Edit: Apparently this is not interesting to HNers. Bring on the downvotes.

~~~
sloppycee
Seems there are now three things that can not be discussed rationally:
politics, religion and climate change.

It is a perversion of science when a scientific theory is no longer subject to
healthy criticism and skepticism.

~~~
mikeash
That's because politics has consumed climate change and made it its own.

I find it really disturbing that so much of (American) politics today is a
debate over _facts_. Politics should be about debating priorities and
principles and approaches based on commonly accepted facts.

------
mjfl
Last February was also one of the coldest.

[http://www.weather.com/news/news/top-five-coldest-
february-m...](http://www.weather.com/news/news/top-five-coldest-february-
midwest-northeast)

~~~
jonathanagough
Except if you look at the linked article and change the month to February.
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-
info/global/201502](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201502)
Second hottest on record

------
bnolsen
sure. more than half the data used in their models is fake made up numbers.
Can't trust anything noaa has to say. using non made up temperature data shows
we're actually very slightly cooling.

~~~
Afforess
I don't see why using inferred/model data is a bad thing. It is simply not
feasible to measure the temperature at every location in the world. Satellite
data, combined with in-situ and model calculations can very accurately fill in
for missing data. The only other option here is to sit on our hands and say
"oh well, I guess we can't predict the weather because we don't have perfect
data", which is completely unreasonable.

~~~
pdkl95
There is another potential concern besides the inferred data (which, as you
say, should be reasonable), though I don't know how much it would affect any
of the larger conclusions (if they are affected at all).

[also, this reference is somewhat old now; I haven't checked if this problem
has been addressed in more recent models]

There is evidence[1] that the climate model software doesn't handle floating
point properly (which is, unfortunately, a very common problem).

    
    
        "... there exist differences in the results for different ... parallel
        libraries, and optimization levels, primarily a result of the treatment
        of rounding errors ... the ensemble spread due to the differences in
        software system is comparable to the ensemble spread due to the
        differences in initial conditions ..."
    

Rounding errors on different hardware, operation ordering, and optimization
level screams that the software isn't properly handling[2] IEEE 754 floating
point. This _could_ be a serious problem in an iterated model that is
chaotically sensitive to initial conditions (hence the use of ensemble
forecasting).

/* regardless, we need a lot thorium reactors ASAP */

[1]
[http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1](http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1)

[2] (pdf)
[https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/NumericalAnalysis/02Numer...](https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/NumericalAnalysis/02Numerics/Double/paper.pdf)

