
Anchorage Has Never Reached 90° F. That Could Change This Week - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/us/alaska-heat-anchorage-fireworks.html
======
cyberferret
My former co-founder of my SaaS was based in remote Alaska (I am in tropical
Australia), and I remember one day a while back late in the year, it was
+35degC here and she said it was -35degC over there. I couldn't believe we
were equidistant on either end of the 0 datum, with a massive 70 degree C
difference in temperature variation.

Weirdly, it is now our dry season, with temperatures around 21degC and I just
Googled the weather in her area and they are expecting around 30degC - Alaska
is actually hotter than Northern Australia is right now!

~~~
hellofunk
But isn't that partly due to it being summer in Alaska right now, and it is
winter in Australia? You said "late last year" was your previous comparison,
which implies it was approaching summer in Australia?

~~~
cyberferret
We are so close to the equator here that we don't really have the equivalent
of 4 seasons. Rather just a 'wet' and 'dry' season. Probably about a 15 degree
C variation in temperature throughout the year.

My point was that I don't believe Alaska ever got warmer than we ever do here,
but it has happened. My first story about the 70 degree variation in
temperature is more the norm.

~~~
cmroanirgo
for reference (for everyone else). Darwin is 12 deg south of the equator,
which makes it closer than Hawaii/Honolulu (which is 21 deg north), or
Nicaragua which is roughly the same at 12 deg north. Darwin is typically hot
and humid.

------
adrianN
Maybe that'll make them rethink drilling for more oil and gas there.

~~~
tremon
Of course not, they need that oil and gas to power the AC units everyone will
be buying now. Won't somebody think of the revenue?

~~~
LeonM
I don't expect Alaska residents will immediately start buying AC units just
because 1 day in a year reaches 32°C.

32C is not that bad, a simple fan is more than enough to keep you cool.

~~~
heavenlyblue
The way you experience temperature heavily depends on the relative humidity.

E.g. I find 0C in London way colder than -15C in Northern Europe.

~~~
kobbe
That is actually a common myth: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-
and-fitness/fitn...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-
fitness/fitness/is-damp-cold-really-the-worst/article28346087/)

I also think that you wear different clothes and are more prepeared when it is
-15.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Nah, he has no idea what he's speaking about.

It's not _just_ humidity. Rain just simply can't exist at -15C, so you can't
get your clothes moist because it can only snow, and that snow is cold enough
not to stick to you at all.

I am not even going to start on the fact that you can walk miles of snow and
not get wet, while walking through miles of slush... Well, I hope you
understand the distinction.

------
billpg
There was me thinking the city occasionally travels towards the North Pole but
never quite gets there.

------
mrfusion
How far back is “never”?

~~~
thebigspacefuck
The first sentence of the article: “In more than 100 years of Anchorage
history, weather stations have never recorded a single 90-degree reading.“

------
alex_duf
If any mod could edit the title to be "90°F" that would be great, it took me
longer than I'm willing to admit to understand what it meant :)

~~~
yogeshp
Looks like some mod already did that.

Great ! now rest of the world can't understand.

~~~
alex_duf
I think you're mistaken. I'm just asking to add the unit to make it clearer.

I won't enter into the unit war, and FWIW I'm used to centigrades.

------
eps
That’s 32C apparently

~~~
StreamBright
I was wondering what is the actual unit. 90 degrees is a bit overloaded.

~~~
akho
Perpendicular?

~~~
loup-vaillant
That's what I initially thought.

~~~
baq
Alaska Has Never Reached A Right Angle has a nice ring to it.

------
martincollignon
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~~~
NeedMoreTea
Same copy paste on _every_ climate change post is starting to feel like
tedious spam at this point.

I see from your history it's the only thing you have ever posted on HN.

~~~
martincollignon
Hey NeedMoreTea, you're right - so far I haven't posted so much else. Do you
have any idea on how to raise awareness of community projects that you would
feel are more respectful? 50+ people have joined the projects over the last
week, attributing it to threads on HN, so it seems that for some users it is
providing some value.

~~~
cousin_it
If you're only here because this place has high visibility, not because you're
interested in the conversation, you're a spammer no matter how noble your
goals are.

~~~
martincollignon
I'm (obviously) very involved in climate change and how tech (very represented
in the HN community) can play a role in fixing it: many are asking themselves
the question on how they can do something about it.

I want to help these people find a spot where they can find like-minded people
interested on working on it - and I believe climate change posts on HN are a
good match between people concerned about the climate, and who would be
interested in joining tech communities working to fix it. I'm all ears to find
other ways to give people avenues to work on their "climate" anxiety - let me
know if you have better ideas.

~~~
yostrovs
I'm concerned about the starving people in sub Saharan Africa. It would still
be inappropriate for me to constantly spam you about it, regardless of how
hungry they are.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes. Absolutely. I am concerned about the security/surveillance state. I
understand this and try to apologize when I start going on about it.

I love HN, but it's gotten so that if it's a weekend or U.S. holiday, it's
climate stories. I'm happy to ignore them, but the site itself is beginning to
look a bit preachy on this particular topic.

~~~
graeme
So, the person copy pasting shouldn’t do that, but....I would expect the
volume of climate stories to get larger, not smaller.

The issue is growing in urgency and severity. By social convention people
treat it like any other issue, but it drawfs anything else in terms of the
scale of the problem.

So it’ll remain relevant to the forum, which tends to do a better joh
weighting things based on importance. That said the discussions likely verge
on repetitive.

------
StreamBright
In the last 100 years. Missing from the title.

~~~
iamzozo
"The highest temperature ever recorded at Anchorage’s official station was 85
degrees"

~~~
StreamBright
Yes so in the last ~100 years it was the highest. How about 1000 years or
100000? Why is only the last 100 years relevant in the context of climate?

~~~
Retric
We use 100 years as a benchmark for weather events like floods. As to why I
guess it’s a good benchmark for living memory.

~~~
StreamBright
So I guess there is no scientific reason, just living memory. For me such
articles just lack the scientific merit and the only purpose is trying to
cause mass hysteria. Earlier it was about how we all going the freeze to
death, nowadays it is how we are all going to die because of global warming.
In fact Earth went through several warm and cool periods, even if you look
back just few hundred years. I am all for reducing CO2 and I am pretty
successfully reduced unnecessary CO2 production in my work by using more
efficient solutions and not wasting energy because this is what is under my
control to help mother Earth. Writing click baity articles without context and
scientific merit is not going to help anybody.

~~~
keymone
Or maybe it’s only you who considers it clickbait and everybody else
immediately understood the article was about recorded history of temperatures,
because, you know, it’s kinda common sense?

~~~
StreamBright
I do not debate whenever it was the record in the last 100 years, I just try
to understand what is the scientific implication.

If you look at the bigger picture it means nothing:

Last 65M years:

[http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_C...](http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg)

Lat 10K years:

[https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-
last-10000...](https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-
last-10000-new-a.gif)

Now please explain to me that how looking at only the last 100 years is
relevant or it prooves anything.

------
teekert
Meh, just measure long enough and you are going to see those tails of your
standard normal distribution fill up slowly.

~~~
adrianN
Weird how all the hot tails fill up after 2000 and all the cold tails filled
up before 2000.

~~~
sp332
Illustrated [https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/NORTH_AMERICA-USA-
Alask...](https://showyourstripes.info/stripes/NORTH_AMERICA-USA-
Alaska-1901-2018-BK.png) Source:
[https://showyourstripes.info/](https://showyourstripes.info/)

~~~
teekert
Good remarks, good sources. Still would like to see if there is no naturally
sinusoidal tendency in the slightly longer term, i.e., are we just going into
another Medieval Warm Period? [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period)

~~~
adrianN
With which parts of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change)
do you disagree?

------
huffmsa
100 years of temperature data isn't saying much though.

If we could show that prior to the Last Glacial Period the temperature never
breached 90°F, maybe this would be compelling.

~~~
reallydontask
Is there a way we could do this, namely get air temperatures prior to the last
glacial period?

It seems that you are setting an impossible bar rather than seeking an honest
inquiry, happy to be corrected though

~~~
irjustin
Sadly this is one of those arguments that are basically impossible to refute
with large enough timescales.

I don't like the argument because it's unprovable with any degree of
reliability (i.e. we can know the ice age was cold, but how cold? generally...
this cold), but to outright ignore it is not fair either.

------
nullwasamistake
It has, Earth was much warmer in the past. I completely believe climate change
is happening, but I don't understand why a new temperate record is scary.

Higher sea levels, higher temperates, higher CO2. The earth has had all that
for millions of years in the past without triggering mass extinctions. Humans
have been around for all of it except higher CO2.

And it's all happening on a slow enough time scale (generations) that I expect
minimal disruption. Global warming is real but not the apocalyptic catastrophe
that media makes it out to be. We as a species have better things to worry
about like millions of us dying from preventable diseases every year.

