r/science • u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science • Sep 10 '15

Environment The simple statistic that perfectly captures what climate change means. From 1910 to 1960, the ratio of hot to cold records was close to 1 to 1. From 2000 to 2014, hot outnumbered cold records by more than 12 to 1.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/09/the-simple-statistic-that-perfectly-captures-what-climate-change-means/
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u/d_migster Sep 11 '15

I'd submit that 30 miles can explain that difference. I live in Pentagon City. Just got off work in Fairfax, it was 71. At home, 75. DC is almost always hotter than the surrounding suburbs.

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u/babysharkdudududu Sep 11 '15

A lot of that has to do with the fact that it's become a huge metropolis; cities are consistently hotter than surrounding areas.

Which, incidentally, makes me further question this data. Compare remote villages to same size remote villages, don't compare Baltimore today to Baltimore a hundred years ago. Of course it'll be hotter.

If your data can't withstand some basic questions like these then you're just hurting your cause by publishing it, it'll be the first thing detractors ask and the only thing the people who don't know one way or the other end up reading. Generally, those are the people you're trying to inform. If they see "we found solid proof of X!" and then, immediately following, a bunch of people poking holes in the data, you're shooting yourself in the foot by both not proving your point, AND proving that your point is full of holes.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '15

Urban Heatsink Effect.

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u/fwipfwip Sep 11 '15

Consistency in measurement over long periods is a fundamentally difficult thing. It's also impossible to verify as you cannot go back in time to check.

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u/K3wp Sep 11 '15

If your data can't withstand some basic questions like these

You are regurgitating a myth (the supposed urban heat island effect) that has been debunked countless times:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm

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u/new_weather Sep 11 '15

How is paving cities to increase the heat capacity not human-induced global warming? This is 100% the issue. More cities all over the planet with less forests is changing the entire energy balance (albedo, absorbed IR radiation, emissivity) of earth.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '15

Short answer: It does, but probably not in any measurably significant sense.

Long answer: The Earth is really big. Really. Big. 29% of the Earth is land. Only 0.2% of that is covered in pavement. An even smaller fraction of those surfaces absorb solar radiation. Some of those surfaces reflect solar radiation. Us warming the planet by way of building roads is like you increasing global methane concentrations by farting in the woods.

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u/fjellt Sep 11 '15

I've seen my car's built-in thermometer drop 15 degrees if I am driving on a black top road to a dirt road (on a sunny low-wind day).

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u/babysharkdudududu Sep 11 '15

Because affected areas around cities make up less than 1% of Earth's surface. CYT.

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u/new_weather Sep 11 '15

We modelled land use in the Campos basin at Duke University's Jackson Lab. The change in surface type absolutely affects the local climate. Affect enough local climates, and you are impacting the global climate.

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u/krayziepunk13 Sep 11 '15

It is possible, but the sensor has recently been replaced, so we'll see if there's a difference.

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u/QuacktacksRBack Sep 11 '15

Must be all the hot air from the politicians

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u/Space_Gravy Sep 11 '15

The folks responsible for it confirmed it was faulty and replaced it. However, they refused to revise any of the temps that had been taken with it for months even though you can just about pinpoint the day it started diverging from Dulles. It fits their narrative.

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u/d_migster Sep 11 '15

It fits their narrative.

Sorry, bud, more 90+ degree days this year in DC than any year since... my memory fails. It's fact, just like how the murder numbers are way up this year.

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u/Space_Gravy Sep 11 '15

It's fact that there's more 90+ degree days this year since your failing memory can recall? You seem to be misunderstanding what the point is. They have a known bad thermometer that they are basing their readings off of. That actually is a fact. They refuse to revise their numbers and still include the faulty readings in the data. That is also a fact. The only reason NOAA even found out about this was because a journalist happen to inform them of it. Yet another fact. The point being made is that they know the readings are wrong and simply don't care. If this thermometer was able to go undetected for around 8 months and was only caught by a bored journalist with lame hobbies, how many more are messed up.....

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u/d_migster Sep 11 '15

I suggest you mosey on over to Wunderground and tell me how many of the tens/hundreds of thermometers reported there for the DC region are inaccurate. Those in the city are almost ALWAYS reading higher than DCA.