UK heatwave: Temperatures still rising after record broken before noon | Hacker News Reader

UK heatwave: Temperatures still rising after record broken before noon

bbc.com

29 pointsDinux14 comments

Looks like there's no train travel because British train infrastructure was designed with these kinds of temps in mind:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62219556

> "Where those tracks are 40C in the air, on the ground that could be 50, 60, 70 and more, so you get a severe danger of tracks buckling. What we can't have is trains running over those and a terrible derailing. We've got to be very cautious and conscious of that, which is why there's reduced speeds on large parts of the network."

It turns out you can build railways designed to handle greater temperature variations, and these are used in other countries, but when the UK system was designed future warming wasn't taken into consideration.

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/why-rails-buckle-in-br...

Given that warming is now past the tipping point and we'll be in a steadily warming state for the next 100 years (with some control over the rate, i.e. phasing out fossil fuels over the next 30 years vs. business-as-usual for the next 30 years will have large effects on temps 60 years from now, for example), major infrastructure reconstruction is a real necessity.

It's glorious weather here currently (although I recognise I have the privilege of not actually having to work or be out in it)

This is like our couple of days of summer per year. The forecast for the rest of the week says it's back to rain and colder weather though.

39 degrees in the UK is the sign of dire times coming our way, it has absolutely nothing glorious.

Sign of the dire times came a couple decades ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

Yep. 2022 was the hottest summer since 2003, and 2003 was the hottest summer since 1540. Very dire.

Will this have similar effects on crops? Seems like bad timing

As a result of climate change you get more extreme weather, but how does that automatically result in dire times?

When it starts interfering with agriculture by killing crops, resulting in famine and food shortages.

I understand how it can happen, but the original poster wrote in such a way that this would be inevitable. I don't think that is certain.

This isn’t some speculative thing. It literally happened in the 2003 heat wave, where crops failed due to the extreme heat. With even higher temperatures in this heat wave it will certainly happen this year too.

As these sorts of heat waves become more frequent, our food supply will become more unstable which, left unchecked, will eventually result in famine even in rich parts of the world like Europe.

You can still enjoy it.

How is it glorious if you don't actually have to or want to go out in it? I don't understand.

They only said they didn't have to not that they didn't want to.

Could you specify "here"?

It's also glorious weather in Point Hope, Alaska currently...though 6C in July may seem a tad nippy to folks in the Lower 48.

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