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Comment by bromuro | Hacker News Reader

In my family we are collecting climate data since 1948 and as child i remember temperatures above 37C where extremely rare (like 3 times in 60 years). We were super excited when once the record was exceeded of a decimal point.

Now we have days with 37 and 38 C every summer, sometimes even 40 (we are in south europe).

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I'm in northern Europe, and some places in the country hit 40. When I was a kid, 30 was rare. Above 35 unheard of. This year was absolutely extreme, and yet I fear it may become the rule.

This is just the beginning. We are halfway of the way to 1.5°C and there is no reason why warming should stop at 1.5°C.

> In my family we are collecting climate data since 1948

Do you happen to know in what years were the previous temperature records set? Could it be they were set prior to 1948?

1976 in the UK was fiercely hot for months. I've been told that there was smoke in every direction from our house due to wildfire.

That's a cool family project! However, assuming that you're only collecting data where e.g. you live, I think you're collecting weather data, not climate data. Climate refers to global averages.

This may sound like a nitpick but it's important to remember that no data from a single location can say much of anything about what the global climate is doing. It's quite possible for some places to get colder even if the climate grows warmer.

Wikipedia: " . . . long-term averages of weather are called "climate".[1][2]"

"The climate of a location is affected by its latitude, terrain, and altitude, as well as nearby water bodies and their currents."

Climate is defined as long term averages of weather, so a single location can have a climate that's different from another location.

No, a tropical rainforest and the South Pole have very different weather patterns. Those trends which generally includes seasonal variations are called Climate.

In a broader sense, the "climate" of a region is the general state of the climate system at that location. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate

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