A severe heatwave is ongoing in Europe. Temperature records broken in France, Switzerland, Germany and Spain.
On 11 July 2023, the Land Surface Temperature (LST) in some areas of Extremadura (Spain) exceeded 60°C, as highlighted in this data visualisation derived from measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) instrument. The ongoing heatwave in Spain this week is resulting in a total of 13 autonomous communities, being at extreme risk (red alert), significant risk (orange alert), and risk (yellow alert) due to maximum temperatures that, in some cases, will exceed 40°C and reach a maximum of 43°C.
For reference, "in areas where vegetation is dense, the land surface temperature never rises above 35°C. The hottest land surface temperatures on Earth are in plant-free desert landscapes."
Not even then sometimes. In Germany, there was a small village buried under a mudslide from a flashflood that was a direct consequence of extreme weather patterns created by climate change. That same village overwhelmingly voted for conservative politicians that don't care about doing anything about climate change the very next year.
For a while now, the question of democracy has been haunting the climate change issue. In the west, at least, it has shown itself ill-suited to the task of handling climate change. Of course, seriously proposing older forms of government would be dangerous and perhaps even insane. But the tension is there, and when we look back on all of this, democracy, or the form we have, is likely not going to look good.
I've spent last August sitting in the shade listening to the music from the village parties mixed with the sound of the airplane engines flying over a nearby forest fire. It was bizarre. But then, what is one to do really? People who live around here aren't really the ones to blame. Can't really blame them for still wanting to have their village party.
While I, who does give a shit, do little more than eating local and avoiding consumerism. Eating the rich might me more efficient, but there's none around here, we just have grapes and potato.
Northern India saw intense heatwaves just a few weeks back and now is being drowned. Indians are used to heatwaves and floods, but this year the intensity and scale both are frightening.
This was the reason it changed from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change". More energy is being dumped into the weather system. This makes everything more extreme. The heating is almost incidental to it. The extra energy is the killer.
Both of those progressing nicely in Spain, and the result was... a rise of the right, that has doubled down on destroying the aquifers in the south, the most affected region.
So the worse things become, the more people turn a blind eye to the issue.
Stupidest fucking comment I've ever read in my life. Water doesn't dry up? Have you never seen a dry river bed? Or how about salt flats?
This is why we are doomed to die to climate change. People like you who are completely unwilling to even begin to understand the thing they refuse to accept.
Ah, I see you're one of these people that will dismiss such claim because of "surface temperature".
Well, as someone that:
currently lives in an area with a long-lasting heatwave
can't levitate above the ground
need to breath air
I can tell you that surface temperature, even if they make "bigger numbers", are extremely relevant to the degradation of the situation, no matter how misleading you think it is.
The ground didn't "suddenly" get hotter with everything else staying the same; and everything getting hotter also have dire consequences. It's just a metric, it might not be the best one, but people should stop dismissing these, because it's by having a hot frying pan that the content gets cooked.
Nope, not at all. You completely misunderstood my point.
I'm not saying the ground suddenly got hotter and everything else stayed the same. In this case, it's just a metric that's quoted because it has a misleading high value especially by people who are just scrolling through.
But we don't live directly on top of the ground; we live 5 or 6 feet above the ground, and thus air temperature is much more important to understanding heat impacts to human health and well-being.
Here's an article talking about the types of temperature measurements. If LST is high, odds are air temperature will be high to, and air temp is much more relevant to our life as a human, whether we're going to die, and easy to compare to how hot it is locally.
Yeah, it's confusing and unhelpful. People should standardize on reporting air temperature unless there's a very specific and compelling reason not to.
It's not fine if it's what's used in the title. It's fine to include it as part of the post, but only including the surface temp in the title is misleading.
I know this is a world community but I'm just going to throw the conversion out there for anyone who needs it to understand how hot that is, that is 140F.
Get ready for new eco bans, we will have to stop using plastic milk containers and factories will produce more junk to put the milk in to. Like with the plastic straws and bags, good idea on papper, poor execution irl.
Maybe you're being funny, maybe not, but plastic bag pollution and straws etc are not the driving force behind temperature swings like this. Atmospheric gasses such as CO2, CH4, etc are the issue that causes climate change, and thus the instability accompanying things like greater peak temps, more disasters, etc.
The bags and straws discussion is about environmental care. Eg not letting sea turtles eat plastic bags because they think they are jelly fish.
What iam saying that the average person will get the short stick, and the big polluters like factories will not see any new anti pollution regulations. Like do we need 100s of key chain factories, we lived without useless plastic trinkets before, ban those things because thry have no use.
Yeah indeed, the paper bags are more polluting to produce than its plastic equivalent. The many problem with plastics is that it does more damage when it ends up in nature, but it is recyclable though.
We should stop blaming the people/consumers and start blaming the large corporations that dump PFAS in our drink water supply, like they did here in The Netherlands and Belgium. That does lore harm than the plastic straws ever did
It's going to be absolute hell because homes in these countries are designed to retain heat, have no air conditioning, and typically are built with large windows to let as much light in as possible.
Heat pumps for everyone until they are underwater from rising oceans. I thought the jet stream was going to make it much colder in the isles so maybe it'll balance out lol.
I always hate these comments, and this is a whole new level.
Acclimatization or acclimatisation (also called acclimation or acclimatation) is the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as a change in altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain fitness across a range of environmental conditions.
I'm not sure if the OP edited it or not, but it sounds like you're assuming they're saying something more than they are.
They never said "we're all going to die". They're just pointing out that it's also a very high surface temp in Arizona, which is nearly exactly the surface temp the title states in Spain.