Europe sees warmest winter since records began | Hacker News Reader

Europe sees warmest winter since records began

euronews.com

62 pointsreddotX34 comments

In case somebody is wondering about the significance of a temperature record

https://books.google.com/books?id=N0FLSOmeFPsC&pg=PT59

Bottom line: records are extremely rare if events occur at random. If new records become far more common than the harmonic series predicts, then this is telling us that annual climatic events are no longer independent annual events but are beginning to form part of a systematic non-random trend.

from post "1924-25 was similarly warm, with a couple of degrees above the climate at that time"

so was it or was it not the warmest since records began ( and by how much) ? i don't get it..

It was, by 1.4 degrees. 1924-25 was similarly warmer than the baseline at that time. The article describes an above-average year on top of a warming trend.

It was the warmest since records began.

'24-'25 was just similarly much warmer than average at that time. Winters that are 3-4 degrees above average happen every so often. However, since the average is now much higher than a hundred years ago, it was still much warmer than back then.

1924-25 was above average for its period.

2019-20 is similarly above average for its period, and the average for its period is higher.

They did just switch from ERA-Interim to ERA5 data source, April 2019.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/era5-new-dataset-monthly-clima...

Have we considered doing something about global warming?

Europe is doing quite a lot compared to others, especially China, USA and India.

Perhaps, but so much more needs to be done.

I am afraid that we as a species wont be able to act together quickly enough to have a real chance of halting the run-away changes that seem to be starting up all over the planet.

I think it's already too late - US is withdrawing from the Paris agreement. Australia is in complete denial it seems

We need to reduce emissions yesterday and reduce our plastic output considerably. We're not doing anything on a scale big/quick enough to matter.

We don't have until 2050 or the targets some governments have set.

We need it done by next year, 2021, but that's unlikely to happen. We need new laws enacting tomorrow and to give everyone a big kick up the ass to get their acts together.

That's not going to happen, no matter how desperate Greta, Attenborough make it seem.

> That's not going to happen, no matter how desperate Greta, Attenborough make it seem.

True. Greta alone won't save the climate for us. We need to get afk and go help her.

> I am afraid that we as a species wont be able to act together quickly enough

Let me just point out that we the species also include you. And me. It's up to us.

While it's true that individual action is a critical part of mitigating climate change, I think OP was referring to the fact that a tiny portion of people control most money and power on earth, with which they could make positive changes at scale and faciliate said individual actions. We need change from individuals, but also from governments and corporations.

> but also from governments and corporations

Absolutely. And the governments respond to popular pressure. When I say "It's up to us", I mean we should go out, join popular movements and pressure the government.

Not really, Germany for example, knows the plans they decided on won't work.

Austria has afaik still growing co2 emissions.

Don't know about other countries but at the moment if feels like europe talks a lot but doesn't do much.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

EU stands out as the one line that has been trending down.

Austria might change so, now that the green party is part of the government coalition. Could very well be too little too late, so.

Germany is different matter, we are still building new coal plants while making wind more or less impossible in Bavaria. Hope that changes as well, if nobody seriously starts nothing will ever get done.

Too busy focusing on CoVID19 for now.

Individually? voting for people who seem to care about the problem could help.

I tried hard to resist how unusually warm March (and February) has felt.

Can anyone explain how the Northern Hemisphere has snow mass more than two standard deviations above median this winter, despite the local warming in Europe?

https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe...

More snow falls just below 0C than in -10C or -20C because air can hold more water vapor the warmer it is.

If it's -20C the water from the ground doesn't go into the air as much and doesn't fall back as a snow.

Snow forms in the upper atmosphere at about 15,000 feet before it falls to the ground. Temperatures are always about 25C less there than on the ground. It's not strictly true that cold air holds less water vapor. Water vapor is more likely to condense at cooler temps. The likelihood that water will condense to form rain and snow droplets is impacted by the dew point and the amount of particles in the atmosphere to formulate liquid or ice.

Yes, and it's snow mass. If you do manual snow removal in your yard at 0°C or -5°C you feel a huge difference. And even if the mass is there, it melts earlier.

It's odd, I'm in the Alps. It snowed twice in all of February. Since the beginning of March, we've averaged more than a foot of snow fall a day.

The article only counts to the end of February. Feels like winter is back.

I dont know, but the last glacial periods started after rapid (in geological terms, still long times) increases of temperature. Followed by declining temperature and increasing ice volume over thousands of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

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