Southern Europe in extreme heat, with Greece seeing temperatures of 40C or more | Hacker News Reader

Southern Europe in extreme heat, with Greece seeing temperatures of 40C or more

bbc.co.uk

48 pointsvanilla-almond101 comments

The climate zones in Europe are being shifted northwards. Mediterranean/southern countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are experiencing conditions like the ones from Northern Africa. Central European countries are having a milder climate, with more extreme “bursts”.

Records are going to be broken over and over, especially next summer when the currently ongoing El Niño is going to “hit” us. Our planet is not happy with what we’ve done all these decades and we’re going to pay for it :-(

You are correct, but in practice the planet doesn’t care and will survive in any case. What we should have been saying, instead, is that we are going to be unhappy.

The narrative about protecting the environment/the planet should have always been about protecting ourselves from the planet, because we have learned to do that already. A more egocentric message could have worked better for the general public.

[edited to hopefully sound less snarky]

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't see how the poster was violating that guideline. I say that as someone who frequently thinks people break that guideline.

I know the op was in good faith, and the critique is not to him, but to how (I think) we failed communicating the correct risks to the general public in the last decades, which undermined the feeling of urgency/importance of the problem.

I edited the original message trying to make that more explicit and appear less snarky, thanks for the feedback!

It's not the 'general public' that makes the rules and any one individual doing what they can isn't going to make a whole lot of difference as long as industry is exempted (which it is in plenty of places). Thanks for the edit, appreciated.

Sure, but the urge of avoiding self-imposed extinction can change the political agenda and the regulations. I think we saw that for nuclear warheads (compare now vs the 60s), and (in the wrong sense) for nuclear power too. We’re sort of seeing it in the EU for AI right now!

Of course the problem is that those feel like problems that could kill you or your kids, while climate change doesn’t. But again, that’s also connected to message formulation and correctly communicating the feeling of urgency…

That depends on who you talk to. But, to make it simple: if COVID19, which arguably was a far smaller problem than climate change (even though it isn't gone and never will be gone), I think you can see that the degree of lack of global policy and unity while dealing with that is any precursor of what our approach to climate change is (and has been so far) that we're royally fucked. You can't solve global problems with local policies, especially not if those local policies undo each others' effects.

In a quite real sense the general public does decide the rules through representative demoracy in western countries, and the ignorance and complacency of votersin this respect arguably result chiefly from failures in communication.

That is true in the abstract. But in practice people are - usually - not single issue voters and on paper at least almost all political parties that you could vote for have some climate fig leaf in their party program. And that's as far as most people's political interest goes.

Attempts to communicate these 'uncomfortable truths' and their ultimately utterly predictable outcome unfortunately have to deal with the fact that the consequences are conveniently over the horizon for pretty much everybody of voting age today. There may be some mild discomfort but unless you happen to live in regions where there are already concrete troubles today you can easily ignore the problem.

And so people do just that: they ignore the problem, because it doesn't affect them. Yet.

And by the time it does it will be too late. This is how you get into very bad situations. Democracy is ill suited to deal with this sort of challenge (though it works well for lots of other kinds of problems). As is capitalism. And yet, those are the two main building blocks most of the developed West are constructed out of. And we're not even close to wanting to let either one or both of these go to deal with climate change.

Which partially explains why China and Russia are full steam ahead with the current pace of climate change. Huge swaths of their land is going to become arable.

China needs more arable land for food independence. Does Russia? It’s not like Muskeg becomes arable.

Not trying to be pedantic here, but Spain has like 5 different köppen climate categories. Up in Galicia and Asturias it can be high tens/low twenties with rain during the day while it can be 44C down in Sevilla.

This year we've placed aircons in our entire home (Netherlands). With a garden to the south-west, and rising temperature, and good insulation, it becomes quickly too hot here. And we can of course heat our home in the winter too, but we mainly did it for the cooling capabilities.

Did you look at passive ways to block the sun on the south and west walls? It can be very effective, have a low up front cost and no operating cost.

I don't know what we can do. We already have a roll down sunscreen. Painting the house white is not something that will be accepted by the neighbours.

Though it depends on the particulars of your house and garden, there are ancient techniques -- "rediscovered" by modern permaculture -- that are effective here. Plant dense, deciduous shrubs and trees along the southern side of the house, especially in front of windows. The shade and the evaporative cooling provided by them should help to keep the house cooler in summer, whilst still allowing sun to heat the house during winter.

It's not as effective as air conditioning, but it's more sustainable, certainly.

Houses in Spain have stone floors, instead of carpet or wood that we often have in Netherlands. Maybe you can switch depending the season

And here in England, it's been miserable for over a week. Temperatures barely reaching 20s, if ever. Also rains on a daily basis.

I actually prefer this weather to 40 degrees Celsius.

Me too. Easy to throw on additional clothes to keep warm, but at 40 Celsius there’s nothing you can do when out, baking in the heat and showing up everywhere sweaty.

Weather forecast in Dublin: +19 for the next ten days. Just perfect.

You're getting down voted for the weather. That's amazing

> The climate zones in Europe are being shifted northwards.

In North American as well, at least per the hardiness zones that gardeners use:

* https://gardeningcalendar.ca/gardening/gardening-basics/hard...

* https://landscapetrades.com/canadas-new-plant-hardiness-zone...

Similarly zones used in building codes:

> However, with new research based on measured temperature data from over 4000 weather stations throughout North America over the last 25 years, the IECC designated changes to the CZ map for the first time in nearly 20 years. The outcome was that about 10% of counties in the U.S. were placed in a new CZ. In nearly all cases, the shift was to a warmer (lower) CZ, reflecting a general warming of the climate in those areas. The first set of maps below show the old CZs on the left and the new ones on the right. The shaded area across the west in the image on the right highlights the "dry" sub-climates. In most cases, the shift in CZ is relatively subtle.

* https://www.jm.com/en/blog/2021/march/understanding-the-iecc...

I'm nagging my cities Facebook page , or have been nagging them for over a decade and they just aren't doing anything. Instead the destroy more green, build more fully concrete areas without trees.

I can only stand by and watch how everything goes to shit, powerless to do anything, because the local governments just are corrupt and do what they want.

Then, look at this place in Croatia. How is that acceptable in this day and age? A little green. It should be trees everywhere. But at least they use solar panels.

I blame the super rich, the oil industry and car industry. They are murderers.

> Then, look at this place in Croatia. How is that acceptable in this day and age? A little green. It should be trees everywhere. But at least they use solar panels.

Which place in Croatia is that? Is this related to the article or the one that you live in?

Croatia is pretty green outside of the cities, but inside it is like every other city: lots of stone and little green. If they were to make it much more greener to a degree that you'd start to notice it that would mean massive investment in urban restructuring and I highly doubt any Croatian city of substantial size has the funds for that.

They could paint streets and rooves white and have a negative effect on heat Island effect temps.

Many houses there are already stucco'd white.

As for painting streets white: that reflects the heat onto the users of the streets...

https://www.optimistdaily.com/2019/10/turns-out-painting-the...

Just came back from Bulgaria to visit friends and family and I kid you not when that I was very happy to be back in <20C rainy UK weather. I probably will still be miserable when it inevitably gets >30C here but at least it will be for a shorter period than half the summer in BG. And people find it funny when I tell them one of the reasons I moved to the UK was the weather...

There is a simultaneous historic heat wave happening in southern and western US. Death Valley could hit the hottest-ever recorded temperature on Earth of 131°F/55°C

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/14/heat-wave-...

You could almost do sous-vide at that temperature!

It's all a hoax, said the frog in the saucepan.

Earth heats up. Water evaporates. Clouds reflect sunlight. Earth cools down. Oceans absorb more CO2. Mother nature saves us. Or does it?

A common theory is that increased temperatures end up causing an ice age. Bill Bryson discusses that in one of his books and I can’t remember the exact reasoning, maybe it’s something like

Increased heat -> more moisture -> more clouds -> less heat -> ice age

I’m not sure. But it was fairly convincing and has apparently happened on Earth before before humanity according to the records.

The book is probably "A Short History of Nearly Everything". I haven't read it in a while so I might be wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Ever...

I follow the discussion over climate fairly closely and have never heard of this theory before. It does not sound very credible to be honest.

Ah, well here’s some info

https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2021/03/24/weve-known-f...

Which tracks from Bryson’s book, it has to do with the jet streams and underwater currents being interrupted.

I was wrong in my guess though, that’s for sure.

Ah, ice age in Europe due to Golf stream disturbance. This I have heard and it makes sense.

I might be cynical, but the heat and climate problem isn’t that important since after corona working is only allowed from the office by my superiors. If it would be a real problem imho, the home office would be the solution on government level. My yearly mileage would drop from 15000 miles to 1000 miles.

Agreed, it's ridiculous how the work-from-home advantage that we had for a short while has been wiped out. Traffic is as bad or worse than it was pre-COVID.

I've registered 47 on my temp sensor two days ago. This is in Eastern Europe.

Brutal - hope you're able to stay cool, is that 47 in the shade?

In direct sunlight for most of the day. Yeah, I can manage, I have 3 ACs and all blindfolds pulled down. It was rather nice inside, but going outside even for 10 minutes was a dizzying experience.

Is it in direct sunlight?

Yeah, facing the sun most of the day.

Holy crap. Better be careful then. Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Italy are having a tough time at the moment.

That can't be properly in the shade. Either that or you're in a very bad heat island. It's not supposed to have been that warm anywhere in EE the last few days.

Nope, not in the shade. But the truth "on the ground" in some places is different than what they say in the prognosis, which is why I have my own temperature sensors. I cross referenced with friends from other parts of the city which I guess is a pretty bad heat island with all the concrete.

The salty wind from the sea make it much more tolerable imo. I’m in Hungary and the Carpathian Basin must be the worst. It’s like a big bowl, no wind, heat just stuck here, and not enough water surface.

Sadly no, or at least not when the thermal sensation goes above 45C. I can relate the effect of the southerly wind in Spain like being in a hot hairdrier. Believe me you guys have it pretty good over there, with abundant water and plenty of good soil.

> The ESA monitors land and sea temperatures via its satellites. > The hottest temperature ever recorded in Europe was 48.8C in Sicily in August 2021.

this is based on land-surface temperature!

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...

not sure how this is translating to air temperature physically.

40 in greece in summer doesn't seem that extraordinary... Don't want to downplay the news, but i don't think it makes a lot of sense to call "extreme heat record" something that's half a degree above what we're used to ( i mean sure, it's probably a record, but calling it "an effect of climate warming" sounds a bit too much)

It doesn’t seem to say if it is average temperature.

Cyprus and Greece have hit 46 and 48 C respectively before, so this reads a bit sensationalist or dishonest maybe? Just pointing at the average temperature increasing would have sufficed.

Not downplaying 40 degrees at all, I grew up in the Mediterranean and am well familiar with the summers and it wasn’t news that we hit 40. The news used to be about 43 … and so on.

>It doesn’t seem to say if it is average temperature.

The article: "Seeing temperatures", which implies 'max'

40C is high but not uncommon for Greece, 33C in Sofia is far from the highest temps recorded in mid July. The global warming is bad as it gets, yet reporting like that doesn't help the cause.

You seem to be missing the forest though the trees. https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1679816678023000065...

They are not. The article and title are for pointing specifically Greece.

Greece and the rest of Mediterranean have seen such temperatures before. There is no record to break because we have already exceeded it that much more.

The emphasis should be on averages and overall variance increasing and not on specific samples.

The article is a “tree…”

The highest temperature in Europe was set in Greece in 1977 at 48 degrees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_i...

Yeah. One hot day is business as normal. I know that we all want to show examples of extreme weather "on the ground" to quell the retards who say climate change is a hoax, but this isn't it. Even if there had never been humans on Earth, this region would still have 40+C days. The evidence is in year over year averages, not in singular measurements (for now).

I wonder how long Europe will continue to maintain the attitude that "air conditioning is a United States thing"

In London they've built a bunch of towers near me (a few over 20 stories) with no AC. Apparently the apartments were absolutely dire dure last year's heatwave. I'd say a wee while yet.

London is not a nice place > 30C.

A small south-facing bedroom in a tower block without A/C is no joke. Especially when you've got those windows that only tilt inwards by about four inches.

Hopefully permanently if heat pumps catch on as well as they have been.

Edit: are heat pumps considered A/C?

Only if they produce cold (and dry) air, I guess. In general, with an air to water or ground to water heat pump you can technically cool your floor, but that won’t help much (you can’t go very low, to avoid condensation problems)

FWIW with underfloor heating you can reduce the room temperature by a few degrees compared to the outside temperature but this is also generally the recommendation for A/C (which of course doesn't stop people from setting it way lower than that because they can).

True. Even at the same temperature A/C does have the added benefit of removing humidity, which leads to more… tolerable heat.

Heat pumps are technically inverted A/Cs and can usually be put in inverted mode to act as regular A/Cs but they're often used to warm up / cool down water whereas a conventional A/C pumps the cooled air directly into the rooms. Heat pumps that work the same way are also sometimes called air-air heat pumps (contrasted with air-water, which in turn are contrasted with water heat pumps which pump brine into a network of underground pipes to create the heat differential).

When picking a heating system my wife and I did look into air-air heat pumps but as we live in Central Europe and thus need the system for heating as much if not more than cooling and the building's insulation and rooftop solar panels already reduce the need for cooling outside very long and extreme heatwaves, we decided against it (and went with a more common air-water heat pump with underfloor heating) because they're not very efficient for heating.

As I understand it, while underfloor heating retains heat at a stable level even when venting, airflow heating loses heat considerably more rapidly. To compensate, in order to heat up the room more rapidly, air-air heat pump systems often have electric heaters at the vents. These essentially work like an electric hair dryer and consume a lot of energy. On the other hand, underfloor heating is worse at cooling.

Anecdotal reports seem to be mixed on both systems with the only consensus generally being that if you want either system to be more efficient you should look into insulation above all else.

A/C are heat pumps. They pump inside heat to the outside, and any modern A/C that isn't a mobile unit can also reverse its mode of operation and pump heat from outside to inside. Heat, not air, you still need to maintain an healthy air balance inside (CO2, humidity).

People legitimately can't afford air conditioning..

That's of course before we address the elephant in the room. Using air conditioning increase the outdoor temperature if the power doesn't come from emission free sources.

Technically it increases the outside temperature regardless, though not as significantly.

Indeed, power prices are quite high compared to the United States.

> People legitimately can't afford air conditioning.

A small window unit is ~$160 and will last for years. If it's 5,000 BTU with an EER of 11 we should expect it to draw 454W (5,000 / 11) on a hot day (35C/95F, 50% humidity) when running on high. At 25 c€/kWh that's 11 c€/hr. At temperatures below that it will be cheaper.

That's American prices though for a unit, here window units don't really exist. In Spain the lowest price with installation is 600€ even for a no-name unit, and in Eastern Europe with its skilled worker shortage is around 1500€. The latter is from a friend who is very frugal and excellent in shopping around. There are simply no suppliers for less than that. I do agree that running it, if it's maintained and cleaned, costs really almost nothing. I've actually received a 15% lower electricity bill this month compared to last month and now I've ran my AC all day, every day.

Thanks! Are window units illegal in Europe, or just not popular?

Almost noone here has vertical sliding windows that would allow window AC units. You could use internal ac unit with a pipe that goes to a collar wrapper around a window and that's a thing but they're loud inside so people use those as a last resort, when there's no balcony or anywhere to install AC(like old town buildings that are regulated etc).

Some AC units fit in other kinds of windows, or can be modified to. My bedroom has horizontal sliding windows, and a few years ago I sorted out how to put a 16" unit in: https://www.jefftk.com/p/air-conditioning

We have windows that tilt and turn. Tilting windows are awesome because they can be opened just a little to let some air in and it is "held open" by gravity and a latch. So the window has one more "degree of freedom", making window units unpractical.

Sounds like the time is ripe for a budding importing entrepreneur to strike. Pretty sure you can find airconditioners on Alibaba for dirt cheap.

The cost of AC is more than just "stick a window unit in there".

I live in the States, but in a centennial home within a historic city. The thought of a window unit is downright laughable. The windows are single-paned and unsealed, made of wood planks that are decades old. Given how hot it is here, most people just blast their AC and opt for flat-rate plans on power. Thankfully, the Victorian-style homes here have high ceilings, attics, and crawlspaces, which allows for retroactively installing HVAC.

Now consider Europe, where there are homes that exceed 200 yrs in age, and are sometimes made of difficult materials like stone and clay.

I also live in a "centennial home" (built between 1900 and 1920) in a "historic city" (Boston). Window units are very common here; I don't see what's laughable about them?

How would a masonry building make a window unit more difficult?

Unsealed window units are terribly inefficient to the point of being cost-prohibitive for some. The more windows or rooms, the more it compounds. You develop "heat pockets" in the nooks and crannies furthest from windows. What's more, the air tends to move right back out, "air-conditioning outside" as my elders always called it. In homes with unsealed windows, adding central HVAC (if possible) can at least offer a central point of dispersal, so that as the air quickly disperses through the windows, the cooling effect does too.

In the US, windows sizes are very standardized, and many window units are designed to fit snugly so that some degree of sealing can be achieved. In older wooden homes, you'll sometimes see entire walls replaced to accommodate standard double-pane windows, something very common in my city. With stone buildings, which can be very, very old, windows can often come in non-standard sizes, and may not open vertically or even be a rectangular shape. However, replacing a wall is pretty out-of-reach in that situation, either from difficulty and cost of the job, or municipal protections.

> terribly inefficient to the point of being cost-prohibitive for some

I don't see how? Running a small EER 11 unit all day on a very hot day is $1-$2.

> The more windows or rooms, the more it compounds.

The cost should be proportional to the number of window units you run, so if by compounding you mean it's superlinear I don't see how.

> You develop "heat pockets" in the nooks and crannies furthest from windows.

Ceiling fans work well at avoiding this. (Our house has them in most rooms)

> In the US, windows sizes are very standardized, and many window units are designed to fit snugly so that some degree of sealing can be achieved

I haven't seen this. Around here window sizes are pretty arbitrary, and every window unit has accordion bits on the side to block air exchange.

> In older wooden homes, you'll sometimes see entire walls replaced to accommodate standard double-pane windows

Weird; around here you almost never see that (only with gut renovations) and most houses still have their original arrangement. When they were switched to double pane they were swapped in place (usually with slightly smaller windows so no wall work was required).

I think the point I keep trying to get across here is "a lot of peoples' environments and/or architectures do not accommodate this" and you keep rebuking with "well my environment and architecture accommodate this."

I live in an area much hotter than Boston. ACs do not live long here; the rule of thumb is to expect half the life of that in a temperate climate. This means bigger units to combat the sweltering heat in the summer (90-110 F heat index, extremely humid) that are bought twice as often. Sometimes, it's actually more cost effective to just keep working your ACs to death and replacing them, particularly if you don't intend to live in the home beyond 15 years.

All of this applies to window units as well. As I already said, window units don't install smoothly here - some windows get nailed shut from becoming too delicate. I have a couple that were sealed that way prior, and a couple more I'm planning to do myself. Even if I could get window units into the remaining windows, replacement can be very damaging. (Thankfully, I have central HVAC, like most people here.)

I agree we're talking past each other somewhat. Taking a step back, Europe is a large area representing many different building traditions and climates. I'd find it very surprising if window units were uniformly a bad option across all of Europe.

Your example of a place much hotter than Boston isn't that helpful here: the main question is what to do about occasional heatwaves in Europe, thinking about cooling options for places that are almost always tolerable without AC.

(I also interpreted you as saying "The thought of a window unit is downright laughable" in a pretty broad context, but now maybe I think you were trying to say that specifically about in your city?)

You're getting the gist of my point. I bring up being in a place hotter than Boston to point out that it's high temperatures that strain the value of a window unit, not mild or cold temperatures. A lot of Europeans defined by the context of this post are dealing with rapidly rising temperatures. Combine their generally unaccomodating architecture (very prevalent on the quite ancient Mediterranean coast) and rising temperatures put them in a place that window units do little to solve. That's not to say they're uniformly useless, but that certain groups of people are going to gain little from adopting them.

Switzerland is literally the worst.

Homes and hospitals are forbidden from having A/C.

Shopping centers are allowed.

They are forbidden from installing split units, but you can have monoblocs as long as they are not fixed. So there is some relief.

You are not forbidden at the Federal level to have fixed units.

But many states do indeed requires a permit to install fixed units. And have strict regulations such as self producing half of the electricity required by the installation.

Here are a few examples of such regulations:

- Geneva (the most strict state): https://www.ge.ch/installations-techniques-rafraichissement/...

- Fribourg: https://bdlf.fr.ch/app/fr/texts_of_law/770.1/art/16

- Vaud: https://www.vd.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/themes/environnement...

One of the side effect of such regulation is that many business and houses will use cheap non-fixed units with open door and windows instead of installing proper reversible heat pumps.

Forbidden, as in, illegal? How did that came to be?

Green ideology? Degrowth mindset? The Swiss are very “save energy” oriented.

Apparently some people have a hard time understanding that A/C use coincides perfectly with solar power generation.

That region of the world has some weird laws for sure. Just today I read about someone who was fined for leaving his car windows rolled down parked on the street.

Actual article (in German) https://www.bild.de/regional/muenchen/muenchen-aktuell/rosen...

I worked several years designing and installing commercial hvac systems in Switzerland. Plenty of offices, banks, museums etc. have ACs. It’s definitely allowed. But you will need a permit to install a fixed system if it affect/changes the building facade.

The reason why most homes don’t have one is that it’s too expensive for the 3-5 days a year you need it. Especially the new minergy houses can keep cool very well even during summer without an AC.

> Especially the new minergy houses can keep cool very well even during summer without an AC.

Your mileage might vary.

I've personally lived in 2 different "minergie" apartments over the past 2 years (3 summers) and one of them (large, facing away from the sun) was mostly bearable (though I'd still prefer A/C), whereas the other (smaller, facing midday sun) was really hot.

Air conditioning is already widespread in Greece.

Also, I dont think 40°C is that uncommon for Greece.

My car hit 43c today (Cyprus). Hard to stay productive unless you are in air-conditioning.

Everything is fine.

Is anyone else secretly holding out for AGI to solve all of this and/or turn us all into paperclips?

We can solve it ourselves, we just don't want to.

And I could write my term paper, but it’s much easier for ChatGPT to do it for me.

See where this is going if we can easily see that civilization behaves like an average of individuals who don’t want to eat healthy, go to the gym, or watch a documentary over reality TV.

I’d bet money on AGI solving climate change, at this point. It’s humanity’s big term paper and god doesn’t care if we cheat.

We already know how to solve climate change. We just don't want to do it because it would hurt profits.

Celsius was and is lying.

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