
Concerns grow regarding sea ice and Greenland’s ice sheet - pseudolus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/26/europes-heat-wave-is-about-bake-arctic/
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vbezhenar
Another factor is burning forests. Heat waves provokes fires. For example in
Russia huge territories of forests are burning right now, freeing CO₂ and
somewhat contributing to the heat. The worse part is that apparently
government does not want to put out fire, as it is "economically
disadvantageous".

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maxheadroom
It's already baking[0,1], so I'm not sure why they include "about to" in the
title.

[0] - [https://archive.fo/CrVBV](https://archive.fo/CrVBV)

[1] - [https://archive.fo/UfS4A](https://archive.fo/UfS4A)

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starbugs
> [...] it could promote a widespread and significant melt event like the one
> in 2012. During that summer, nearly all of the ice sheet experienced
> melting, including the highest elevations that rarely exceed 32 degrees.

I think it's because we aren't there yet, so baking is probably a relative
term. Also the title refers to the heat wave specifically and doesn't say that
it's not already unusually warm.

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Zenst
Guess we need to start naming heatwaves as we do storms. As storms move, so do
heat waves move/shift. After all, most heatwaves in Europe are born out of hot
air coming up from Africa.

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xvilka
Apart from people migration, I wonder, was there any analysis of the climate
change and sea rise on the global economy points - vital scientific research
facilities, high-tech and complex manufacturing sites, major global financial
institutions (e.g. stock exchanges), major agriculture sites. Most analyses I
saw consider only agriculture changes, but not the rest.

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xvilka
Well, as usual, seems humanity underestimated climate change speed. Even the
scientific community tend to predict the lower pace and temperature rise.

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varjag
Scientific community estimates annual average temperature rises. Individual
peak heatwaves are beyond simulation.

~~~
acqq
Scientific community can also estimate longer-term the size of the
oscillations from the averages and they do that too. The simulations even
include and reflect the real local behavior (the local effects), but still
aren't "weather" prediction.

So it's not that the scientific community didn't warn about the "more
extremes" that are going to be the results of the climate change.

[https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-
audience/science...](https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-
audience/science-climate-change/5-how-are-extreme-events-changing)

"Human-induced climate change is superimposed on natural variability"

"Extremes are _expected to change in the future_ "

The extremes always existed, and they will continue to exist, but the level of
the average moves upwards through the years. Moreover, our human perception
will see the extremes as even extremer, as the absolute records for some
locations are broken again and again, changing the local climate from
"pleasant" to "hard to live" there. The whole world can't be covered with air
conditioners, a lot of places where humans live grew because these were not
necessary. Also, even when the average of the planet changes only two degrees,
there will be locations where the local change will be much bigger, and we
know of them too: it is known that Arctic will be especially much warmer than
that, which is going to have a significant non-local effect.

The hardest to predict are only the shorter-term movements, like "how exactly
the next month will be on every specific place" as they depend on too many
local variables that technically can't be all observed and calculated. But it
is important to note: that limitation is irrelevant for our ability to know
what will happen longer term if we don't act.

Regarding Arctic again, we still track it with the satellites and update the
data daily, see the changes from the previous years:

[https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-
image/](https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-image/)

[https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq...](https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png)

Also Antarctic:

[https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iq...](https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png)

Do bookmark the links and check them again when you stumble to somebody who
wants to claim that "yes Arctic is losing ice, but Antarctic not, so it will
be fine on average."

