An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem
On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.
This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”
This amazement was shared by glaciologist Prof Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter. “No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen. It is extraordinary and a real concern,” he told the Observer. “We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.”
I don’t say this to minimize global warming or climate change or anything like that…
But the entire premise of the fear that this article in particular drives is that temperature is scalar, which it is not.
The claim that a 40° C jump in Sub-Zero temperatures is tolerable, but wouldn’t be in the UK or whatever they’re saying in this article… That’s nonsense. Climate change is plenty terrifying. We don’t need to make shit up to make it scarier.
30° F is not half the temperature of 60° F. Arise in 10° F from 100° F is not the same as a 10° raise from zero degrees Fahrenheit. It’s just not an accurate way to talk about temperature. Temperature is not scalar.
Temperature is not scalar
Messers Rankine, Kelvin and even Fahrenheit would beg to differ… Temperature is scalar, however it’s effects on living things is generally not mostly owing to chemistry.
The claim that a 40° C jump in Sub-Zero temperatures is tolerable, but wouldn’t be in the UK or whatever they’re saying in this article… That’s nonsense
Au contraire my dear fellow. For a human, the article is entirely correct. A rise of 40° C in a particularly cold place is indeed tolerable for a human. A similar rise in, say, the UK today would put the temperature at 52° C - hotter than Death Valley on a well above average day and considerably less tolerable.
Of course a single recorded rise in temperature isn’t a good indication of climate…
yeas 30 degress is not half of 60 because zero is just an arbitrary placement but temperature is most definately scalar. 10 degrees higher at 100 is the same as 0 degrees the reason in everything except of kelvin and its ilk the halving does not work is because the zero point is not truly zero, not because the difference in degrees are different at any point in the scale.
Just bring it on. We aren’t going to change anything until something happens first.
And when things happen, the only changes we’ll make is adapt so that we can continue with our usual destructive shenanigans during the new circumstances.
But adapting is quickly getting so expensive it’ll crash the economic system anyway and with it, a lot of the destructive shenanigans stop.
Well, we will add some ecology version of thoughts and prayers to it. Some veneer of Never Again
If you aren’t fighting conservatism, you aren’t fighting climate change.
“Don’t be all doom and gloom”
And then…
“Catastrophic” weather event.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Poleward winds, which previously made few inroads into the atmosphere above Antarctica, are now carrying more and more warm, moist air from lower latitudes – including Australia – deep into the continent, say scientists, and these have been blamed for the dramatic polar “heatwave” that hit Concordia.
These events have raised fears that the Antarctic, once thought to be too cold to experience the early impacts of global warming, is now succumbing dramatically and rapidly to the swelling levels of greenhouse gases that humans continue to pump into the atmosphere.
“Essentially, it is a vicious circle of warming oceans and melting of sea ice, though the root cause is humanity and its continuing burning of fossil fuels and its production of greenhouse gases,” said Meredith.
Last year the species, which is found only in Antarctica, suffered a catastrophic breeding failure because the platforms of sea ice on which they are born started to break up long before the young penguins could grow waterproof feathers.
Researchers say that the discovery of the loss of emperor penguins suggests that more than 90% of colonies will be wiped out by the end of the century, if global warming trends continue at their current disastrous rate.
“Nevertheless, there is a good case for arguing that if countries are knowingly polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and Antarctica is being affected as a consequence, then the treaty protocol is being breached by its signatories and their behaviour could be challenged on legal and political grounds.
The original article contains 1,780 words, the summary contains 250 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
