'Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe | Hacker News Reader

'Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe

theguardian.com

46 pointsdigikazi58 comments

Europeans seem to enjoy mocking American fondness for air-conditioning (including, occasionally, on this forum). But heatwaves in the US don't kill tens of thousands of people [0]. The forecast for Phoenix this week is north of 105F/40C every day this week and gets up to 110F/43C, and while summer in Arizona is hardly pleasant, it doesn't have disastrous results.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

A lot of the mockery I've seen isn't related to Americans having air conditioning per se, but rather the ridiculously low temperatures the things seem to be set to during summer. I was in DC a couple of summers ago and the hotel I was in was so cold, I needed 2-3 layers (including a warm sweater) indoors... despite the temperature outside being ~40*C!

I don't get it either. Anyone has an explanation? Why is it good if it's so cold inside you have to wear a sweater?

I think there are two things: * Precisely calibrating the temperature of a large space is really hard, and people are surprisingly aware of slight differences in temperature. To me, 68 degrees can feel like "I want a sweater" and 74 can feel like "It's sweltering in here." And preferences vary a lot across individuals * Coming in from the hot to the cold can create a large shock even if the building isn't that cold. If you're outside sweating in hot, humid weather, walking into a cool, dry room will feel frigid at first. Over time, though, it will feel more normal.

</speculation>

This is pretty much it; it's much easier to ask people to wear more clothing than it is to take them off.

Even in an apartment with 3 roommates, we'd have a fight because someone thinks 72 is too cold and it is too hot for me even if I'm barely naked.

That and the fact so many US buildings are paper thin apparently insulation-free things, but with a really big aircon unit. Hopefully that's improved since I was last there.

Yes. I like air conditioning set to 24-26°C, which is comfortable with warm weather-appropriate clothing and the dehumidifying effect of aircon. Any colder seems like a waste of energy and forces you to wear clothing that gets uncomfortable very quickly if you do go outside. I used to work in an air-conditioned office with single room setting where everybody set it from 23-27. If people have to wear suits and can't take off their jackets (rare I guess), 22 might be OK.

25ish°C also seems to be the norm in Asia from my experience. It is fine.

Not just lack of A/C, but social isolation. Most who died lived alone, just as in the 2018 Quebec heat wave that killed 74.

Maybe not now, maybe not in Arizona. But I wonder how much CO2 emissions worldwide are due to air conditioning.

PS: I like air conditioning! But in most places in Europa opening windows on both sides of a building will do the trick during the few weeks of hot, hot summer time.

The average temperature in Europa is -260F / -160C so it's not surprising you wouldn't need AC there.

Well, if we're going that route, it also has no buildings to speak of, and even if it did, opening windows would likely be disastrous!

Surely, you're joking!

That's true. Every morning I have to throw in a few blocks of solid butane in our heater. On really cold days, the air liquefies and forms slippery puddles on the ground. Many a European broke a leg this way. Then again, I really like to saw off a few cubes of alcohol to eat in the evening.

Or there is something wrong with these numbers.

> But in most places in Europa opening windows on both sides of a building will do the trick during the few weeks of hot, hot summer time.

Great idea! Now I just need to ask my neighbors to open their windows at the same time as I do, because my apartment has all windows facing west and theirs have all windows facing east.

Around this time of year, I have my windows fully opened for hours and hours in the evening, but it only helps a tiny bit, maybe 1℃.

In this case you need a ventilator, either on the ceiling or the opened window.

Been there, tried that. Doesn't work. (Or my fan is just not big enough.)

Not the US, but I was in Canada once as a tourist and on a hot day I went into several stores for things. The air conditioning was on everywhere which is OK, but it was set so cold, that I was freezing in my T-shirt.

I don't know if it's similar in the US, but I didn't understand why they set it to such a low temperature. Why can't they choose some pleasant temperature like 25 C which is not hot and not cold, just right?

Because 25C is too hot. 20C is about comfortable, for people who always live in air conditioning.

20C can also be OK, but those stores were set to 15C or below which was unnecessarily cold.

That's seems exceptionally unlikely. Few buildings in the US are set below the equivalent of 20C. 18C might be the very outer limit [0]:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature

I don't know the exact temp of course, but it felt very cold. Like sweater temperature and in 20C I don't wear sweater.

It'd be interesting to see a study of the _net_ effects of them this. They are not only a positive. For example:

> Moreover, air-conditioning in the U.S. may have more indirect but nevertheless dangerous impacts: Whereas Europeans have decided to simply accept the existence of hot days and nights, American architects have been forced to ban balconies and porches from many work spaces and to lower ceilings within buildings to keep as much cold air indoors as possible, according to the Economist. In other words, whereas Americans might be more productive at work thanks to air-conditioning, they are also more likely to be stressed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/22...

They also use a lot of power:

> Using air conditioners and electric fans to stay cool already accounts for about a fifth of the total electricity used in buildings around the world – or 10% of all global electricity consumption today.

https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/may/air-conditioning-...

> The power consumption of air conditioners averages 318 watts (for a 24,000 BTU unit) in most American households. That 318-watt average (source: U.S. DOE) adds up to 228 kWh per month.

https://www.kompulsa.com/much-power-air-conditioners-consume...

At those figures, it would add about a third to my (UK) house's electricity bill.

Edit: Cold weather also kills about 3000 people in the UK every years as they can't afford to heat their homes (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cold-weathe...), so air con wouldn't necessarily remove the problem in its entirety. You'd have the same problem from the other side - people can't afford to cool their homes.

> At those figures, it would add about a third to my (UK) house's electricity bill.

If you lived somewhere where you needed that much cooling you wouldn't have a heating bill, though.

Dallas begs to differ!

There are many cities that get about as cold as Dallas where historically people haven't heated their buildings beyond the incidental heat you get from living and cooking, but that does require you to be ok with your house getting pretty chilly occasionally.

Still, as long as your house is reasonably well insulated heating bills in Dallas are very low and only a few months per year, right?

I guess I wouldn't know. Only a few months, yes, but my heating bill is always higher than my cooling bill. I think the difference is that electricity is cheaper than gas, and my heating at various houses and apartments has always been gas? Not sure.

Last couple of years I've switched to using a radiant heater that's in whatever room I'm in, and that has helped.

Interesting... It does not get very cold here in Florida, but we still typically have heat pumps installed with our ACs. Which are much more efficient than burning gas or electricity for 1:1 BTUs.

Depending on the property's energy efficiency, in most of the continental European countries you'd need both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_average_temp...

They're describing a very powerful (and hence expensive to operate) AC system. I don't see anywhere on your list that you'd need that much cooling except maybe Nicosia and Athens, and there you don't need heating.

In my first 31 years, I lived in a socialist Panelház / Platten Bau buildings. These have such a poor wall insulation (windows are usually double-glazed), on Summer nights even in night you have 25-28C, 33-35 in daytime. Most of my neighbours use their balcony to host the external unit of an AC, so they can maintain a nice 20-25 depending on the time of the day. Because there are no sliding windows because of the poor insulation, mobile ACs are not an option.

Total AC energy expenditure in the US is tiny compared to heating.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10271

2009: 6.2% AC vs 41.5% heating of total household energy consumption.

> Europeans seem to enjoy mocking American fondness for air-conditioning

This is true. I happened to buy a condo where the previous owner had installed a mini-split AC. I took a quick look at it with "lol what is this thing" and forgot about it. Then later I suffered a week or two into the 2014 summer heatwave, before it occurred to me to turn that oddity on. Best thing ever.

We Europeans also still stubbornly think that cars with automatic transmission are not real cars. Although the good fuel economy of hybrids (we love good fuel economy!) is slowly changing this. But if someone made a hybrid with manual transmission, we'd sure buy those.

Thing is, Europe doesn't generally expect quite that heat. If it becomes the new normal and we also become fond of aircon, that's a pretty grim outlook for our energy needs - and hence emissions and reaching net zero.

If it had always been normal and expected our building stock would probably have evolved a little differently.

> If it becomes the new normal and we also become fond of aircon, that's a pretty grim outlook for our energy needs

Hot summers probably come with milder winters, which will mean total savings in energy use. The savings in heating will be larger that the increased energy use in summertime air conditioning.

Also in the US, the most northern states use more energy in year round heating+cooling, than the southern states.

Certainly looks like that's going to be the picture for the coast - UK, Ireland, Northern France etc. Not sure about continental, it may go more extreme both ends.

> Hot summers probably come with milder winters Even if the thermohaline circulation that makes europe winter quite mild is not disturbed, prediction for climate change is colder winter, hotter summer, more flooding and stronger storms. Hopefully there will be some positive feedback loop we did not find about yet.

You make a very valid point. I was in Central and Eastern Europe during the 2010 heat wave [0]. The combination of Soviet style blocks of flats [1], [2] and no air conditioning was pretty unpleasant to say the least. Eldery people living alone were particularly susceptible to the effects of heat.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northern_Hemisphere_heat_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematization_(Romania)

Plenty of such block of flats have AC these days. Lots of people installed ACs in the last several years, since the extreme summer heats became the norm.

"The 1995 Chicago heat wave was a heat wave which led to 739 heat-related deaths in Chicago over a period of five days" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Chicago_heat_wave".

That's in one urban area.

37-40 C is hot, granted. But, isn't this the temperature that places like Bagdad, Northern India etc. endure every year for weeks?

Delhi & Baghdad have got dry heat. Italy with 37 is going to feel a lot more like black-flag weather.

In Italy... Where? Milan is totally different from Rome, which is very different from Rimini or Catania. Generalizations are usually misleading.

Sure... but in hotter climates, clothing and buildings are better geared for it - white for reflectivity, through-draughts, hard floors, etc. In northern Europe housing is generally set up to cope with cold winters.

There are design patterns that are beneficial regardless of temperatures - high thermal mass (smooth out the extremes), reversible blinds (black/white) - control extra solar power coming into your home.

Besides, Europe is not such a small place either. Many houses in the South are geared towards hotter weather and have the the features you described.

They also get notoriously cold in case there's a cold snap, since they aren't insulated very well.

These things are not free, you know. Especially thermal mass which requires thick walls or essentially heat exchangers.

And solar is kind of hard to put on walls of a building you do not own.

I don't think I ever made the claim they were free. There's nothing free in life, so making a statement like that is not really productive.

Imagine if the temperature dropped to -5c for a week in Bagdad.

The people who live in these areas aren’t used to this kind of consistent extreme heat, especially considering how humid it will be.

Northern India is actually experiencing a heat wave too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_heat_wave

Odds are it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Invest in long term efficient cooling strategies.

We’re due storms mid-week. So that’ll be fun.

Vintage Guardian headline

That's true, it does sound a little over the top. But as somebody who has experienced first-hand a European heatwave, I can honestly say at the time it really did feel like hell.

I am not a climatologist or a meteo guy, but I was lucky enough to be able to have a career break in my early 30's. Just for the heck of it I studied geography; my degree came with a heavy element of climate science. I think I retained a fascination with heatwaves - not necessarily the "mechanics" of it, but rather how people/societies live and adapt to them.

'...High humidity meant it would feel like 47C, experts warned. “El infierno [hell] is coming,” tweeted the TV meteorologist Silvia Laplana in Spain, where the AEMET weather service forecast temperatures of 42C by Thursday in the Ebro, Tagus, Guadiana and Guadalquivir valleys and warned of an “extreme risk” of forest fires.'

Some South American style heat briefly affecting an area of Spain is translated by the Guardian as ''Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe'. This is irresponsible journalism and rather typical of their negative sensationalism IMO. Don't underestimate the anxiety this can cause people

Translated by the Guardian?! They are literally using a quote from a meteorologist in one of the countries that will be affected.

https://twitter.com/slaplana_tve/status/1143038630144950273

Indeed. And “infierno” translates as “hell”

http://www.spanishcentral.com/translate/infierno

I also feel that also in weather forecast business there's a lot of sensationalism just to get attention shares from the public.

India just had weeks of 40-52°C, how dare we call some days of 35-40° a heat wave?

FYI a heat wave is relative to the climate in which it occurs, not globally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com