South America is living one of the climate extreme events | Hacker News Reader

South America is living one of the climate extreme events

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136 pointswslh92 comments

A couple of weeks ago happened the same. At least in Uruguay, that typical winter temperatures are around the low 10s Celsius, we had several episodes where temps went to near 30°C. Even we went from a cold wave with near 0C to almost 30 in a couple of days.

There is a seasonal high peak near the start of the winter (that happened too), but being so hot so frequently is very atypical for this season.

Not entirely suprising, this year the El Nino effect is taking place again (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o) so extreme weather was to be expected.

Add to that the global warming and you could put your money on it that a lot of weather records would be broken this year.

It’s too early for El Niño. Which doesn’t bode well

In Chile, El Niño is mostly associated to increased rainfall, though.

Uhh, did no one bother that the author claimed 39C for the Andes but like, the chart itself shows about 16C for the peaks? or am I reading the chart wrong?

I'm brazilian and I'm pretty sure that if this was actually true, we'd have heard this on the news and not on a random twitter profile.

EDIT: unless someone can point me to an actual reputable source, this is fake. I googled for "chilean andine record winter temperatures" and there's not a single source claiming it reached over 30C this year mid-winter.

EDIT2: and I can't find it either on weather forecast websites any absurdly high temperatures for these regions.

You are indeed reading the chart incorrectly.

The chart is temperature ANOMALY - so that’s 16 to 18 degrees over the normal temperature - not absolute temperature.

Link with absolute readings.

https://twitter.com/ThierryGooseBC/status/168649918670608793...

I’m unsurprised you’re not seeing it in tv news in Brazil - your country denies the existence of climate change, and wants to chop down the Amazon for a quick buck. It would hardly fit with the popular narrative.

> I’m unsurprised you’re not seeing it in tv news in Brazil - your country denies the existence of climate change, and wants to chop down the Amazon for a quick buck. It would hardly fit with the popular narrative.

This is a very uninformed take that generalizes a country of 200M+ people. Believe it or not, but people in Brazil are just as worried about climate change as you

Just because from 2018-2022 we had a dumbass as a president doesn't mean the average brazilian doesn't worry about it. Traditional US-stupidity nonsense on this comment.

I’m not American, I speak Portuguese, and I’ve spent enough time in Brazil to know that the average Brazilian doesn’t know or care about the environment.

Sure, some people do, but they’re a minority.

The proof is in the pudding. Are you going to tell me that Amazon deforestation is a U.S. lie to make Brasil look bad? That your economy isn’t dependent on the pillage of the environment?

I’d guess so, as you apparently can’t read a basic graph and yourself deny the reality of climate change: “this is fake” “absurd temperatures”.

> I’d guess so, as you apparently can’t read a basic graph and yourself deny the reality of climate change: “this is fake” “absurd temperatures”.

and you should go back to kindergarten and learn how to read and understand text.

I said I wouldn't believe it because the chart to me looked like a temperature chart, I didn't see anything there that shows temperature anomaly, probably because I overlooked it. Plus, there were no news articles by the time I wrote that comment that stated what was written on the tweet. I'm not blindly accepting everything I read on the internet as a fact, so I am a climate change denier because I questioned a tweet from a random, unverified user?

> Are you going to tell me that Amazon deforestation is a U.S. lie to make Brasil look bad? That your economy isn’t dependent on the pillage of the environment?

What about your country and all the other "first-world" countries that have erased all their forests from existence and are trying to lecture emerging countries how to "save the environment"? You can't even preserve your own green space or approve projects to restore it, yet you try to poke your nose into something that is out of your jurisdiction. What about your economies that are dependent on funding shady companies that do the dirty work for them, pillaging emerging countries for their natural resources and trying to portray the "save the environment" person?

Truth be told, companies like these exist everywhere, not just on the southern hemisphere, and if they are active, it means there are buyers, and believe it or not, the top destination for these deforested resources is Europe.

> I’ve spent enough time in Brazil to know that the average Brazilian doesn’t know or care about the environment.

I don't know where you've been, but I can tell you that just because we don't talk about it everyday it doesn't mean we don't care about it. You're not brazilian, you don't know how we live and some people have other things to care about, i.e., how they are going to get their food on the table for them and their kids, before they engage in a discussion like that.

Are you also going to say we are dumb enough to not care about health? Let me remind you that once we got the COVID vaccines, millions of people went to get vaxxed and it was quick (ignoring the bureaucratic parts, obviously) because even though our public health system is sacked and barely gets any funding from the government, we managed to distribute the shots in a timely manner.

I'm sorry but you're just being an imperialistic prick with a classic "oh I'm from X country I am immediately better than everyone" argument.

Not sure if real or not, but the figure is showing temperature anomaly... basically difference from average. So the numbers do line up.

The chart shows the temperature anomaly, i.e. how much the temperature differs from the temperatures observed in the reference period. I can't say anything about the website that generated the chart, but ECMWF is legit and when I look at the ECMWF models, I can see similar anomalies for South America right now, so the chart is correct.

The claim about the 39°C in the Andes doesn't seem right however. They are having large anomalies, but since the temperatures should be below or near zero there, a +10°C anomaly only causes sweatshirt weather and not summer heat.

I live in the south of Chile. There has been snow only one year within the last three. There is not a person alive who remembers a season without snow. Normally there should be about three meters where we live. This is as extreme as if there was no snow in Lake Tahoe.

> I googled for "chilean andine record winter temperatures" and there's not a single source claiming it reached over 30C this year mid-winter.

Maybe that's because chilean media outlets are written in spanish instead of english. :)

As I googled it again today, there was this news article in a brazilian media outlet: https://g1.globo.com/meio-ambiente/noticia/2023/08/02/chile-... posted 10h ago

There's this article from a brazilian newspaper posted 10h ago: https://g1.globo.com/meio-ambiente/noticia/2023/08/02/chile-...

A gentle reminder to everyone - we don't have to be passive observers of the unfolding global climate catastrophe. We can pretend that we are intelligent, responsible grownups and go do something about it.

If governments wait too long some rogue organizations might start geoengineering efforts. A few orbiting Mylar shields are in order.

I know we're all really dedicated to solving social problems with far fetched technology but this is a lot even for here, come on.

At some point it's either going to be using tech to try to directly solve the issue or accept dying and people will never take dying as an option, regardless of the morals behind the other option.

Somehow I doubt those are the only two options.

It's almost like we need to decouple from the tech and media induced buying spree that is propped up on manufactured obsolescence. That we need sweeping reform and people need to take going Vegan (or at least cutting down meat consumption) more seriously. Air travel should not be subsidized until we have cleaner means of transport, and above all we need to return the buck back to Corporations who green washed us into ownership of their messes. Finally, we also need to be very critical about carbon credits, or emissions offsetting, which can be (and have been) incredibly corrupt. I'm also aware that this platform isn't going to look favourably on "tech slow down", as it is very hard to want to slow down or turn off the faucet.

Personally I doubt that there's any other one, the impact of climate change seemed widely underestimated and the recent large spike of emissions has yet to have any effect. There's already way too much emissions already "locked-in".

We are already having "once in a lifetime" events every month.

The first well-done climate models by Manabe and Wethereld in 1975 found that a 2% reduction in solar radiation would cancel the effect of a doubling in atmospheric CO2 levels.[0,1] This problem has an engineering solution that should be implemented as soon as possible. [2]

0. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/11/1520-0...

1. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-04...

2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-sun-shield-over....

When I see stuff like this I think immediately of like, the Four Pests Campaign, kudzu in the US south, Australian erosion caused by rabbits etc. We can't even reliably predict or manage the consequences of our actions across a single ecosystem. Mind boggling to me that we still however have high confidence in our ability to.

A fictional account of what could happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Piercer#Plot

A 2% reduction in insolation is consistent with solar cycle variations. Aerosols are not the way to do it because they are not reversible, but a shield at L1 is.

As a (hopefully) intelligent, responsible adult, I am at a loss as to what to do that will have any effect. I’ve installed solar, and a heat pump water heater, I don’t have AC despite the sweltering temperatures. I eat primarily plants. I vote for the party that lies to me most persuasively that they will do something about the environment, though I know neither party will do anything of substance.

And yet I turn around and feel that all my efforts are undermined by neighbours who take their giant trucks and 5th wheels or travel trailers on long summer drives at 4 miles per gallon for fun.

Until we have COVID-style restrictions on our lives, we as a society will never voluntarily give up all the bullshit that is feeding climate change.

> Until we have COVID-style restrictions on our lives, we as a society will never voluntarily give up all the bullshit that is feeding climate change.

Oh, we will. When food, shelter, energy, etc. become scarcer and more expensive, we will change our way of life, whether we like it or not.

This is what 40 years of propaganda by the likes of British Petroleum (the ones who invented “carbon footprint”) about how climate change is about middle class people making consumer choices does to you.

Where is this happening? I've tried looking up the weather in several towns in Chile and they all look mild to me.

It’s winter.

I'm on Brazil and yesterday we had 30ºC (about 86F). It's crazy to have these temps in winter! And that was yesterday. Today, it is about 16ºC (60F). Crazy times! No one knows if they should prepare winter or summer clothes.

I can only imagine the temperatures Brazil might reach in the summer from now on

Well, it's definitely weird this year.

I'm in Rio, but I'm from south Brazil, my entire family is using more meds to counter allergies due to temps and humidity changing a lot.

I'm changing from using winter clothes (long sleeves) to use air conditioner to feel less a change from 14oC to 30oC that is usually associated to autumns in south, not winters in Rio, that are usually stable around 22oC without a high amplitude that I'm feeling now.

The city my dad lives near Porto Alegre already suffered twice due to extra tropical cyclones. Something that I heard only few times in my childhood.

Uruguay facing water challenges is new - droughts in the south plains of Rio Grande do Sul (south state bordering UY) and UY is not new - but the severity is.

>my entire family is using more meds to counter allergies due to temps and humidity changing a lot.

People don't get sick from temperature changes. I'm in Canada and in winter go from a 25C house to -25C outside. We'd all be dead of that were true. Late winter early spring I am outside in a t-shirt shovelling show in -7C.

"People don't get sick from temperature changes."

But you were used to it from being raised in such a climate. Those who are not (or lived in air conditioned houses all the time) can get serious trouble adopting.

Edit: I know people who like walking bare foot, but cannot really, because they had floor heating all the time as a child. So now they get sick really fast, if their feet gets a little bit cold. I had no floor heating and I can walk barefeet in the snow (for some time. And today I like floor heating in the bathroom). My point is, be conscious how you raise your kids and live yourself. Don't make it too comfortable ..

Edit2: you can train it even in the shower: switch from cold to hot a couple of times, as intense as you can manage with conscious breathing. That helps me, if I don't overdo it.

I have to pound mucinex to not get a sinus infection every damn season change.

We are not used to such changes. And people here are not used to change from winter clothes to summer in the same day. Like I said, it's usually associated to autumns in the south (carrying both types of clothes).

Since people is not prepared correctly, the number of people I see coughing in the subway is definitely higher.

Not extreme deaths like covid, but impairs people more than usual.

Also my daughter is bringing more stuff from the school that are not learning and knowledge, but viruses of all kinds.

People definitely get sick from weather change

I am from South America and moved to Canada and find Canadians are most of the time either inside their cars or indoors, both places they can control the temperature

Heaters are not common at all in South America, nor are thermostats. Air conditioners are somewhat but I wouldn’t say a majority of the population has them. And a smaller percentage of the populations owns a vehicle because it’s expensive for them.

I'm also from Brazil's south region, and rapid climate changes, mostly caused by quick changes on humidity, makes my upper airway irritated as hell. Allergic rhinitis is a hell of sickness depending what triggers it :)

That's right. But allergies are usually related to trees or insects. I think with warm weather trees are confused and they start pollination.

Weather is more than temperature (e.g. headaches correlating to bariometric changes are well known), and in general I would refrain from "people..." statements based one your personal n=1 sample study :/ There is also a large spectrum between sick and dead, you know? Individuals differ a lot, just be happy if not affected and all is fine for you :)

Also kind of funny to read such hero experiences of someone stepping out for a short amount of time of his controlled climate, pure luxury, enjoy but stay calm!

One cultural difference between the US and much of the rest of the world is that even though the US is very religious, it is not at all superstitious.

I don’t understand what this points to since the conversation was about South America and Canada.

I'm in upstate Sao Paulo and we are having a mild winter. Cooler than prior years. Northern Argentina and Chile are having above normal temps alright [having El Nino next door], but the eastern [high elevation] SA [Brazil] is definitely cooler.

> The city my dad lives near Porto Alegre already suffered twice due to extra tropical cyclones. Something that I heard only few times in my childhood.

One thing I noticed is that local governments (and their respective climate departments) are being much more vigilant and proactive with climate events. And we are in a way paying much more attention to the frequency of climate events. Trying to correlate your own experience of "frequency of events" is a very tricky thing, since we can pretty much condition ourselves to rememeber pretty much anything we want.

Back in the day there were tropical storms and cyclones, and we just moved on. But now local governments will proactively cancel school days if there is a even a hint of a heavier storm. Which is great, but it does mess with our ability to actually estimate frequency of events.

I would do anything to avoid getting sick from June to November due to constantly changing weather in this part of India. Is there some method? Already have medicines.

what is the pathology (IE what about the changes makes you sick, and in what way)?

that info might help narrow down options

Doctors and other people alike say weather change make people sick. Hence never got help that way.

what is the pathology (IE what about the changes do doctors and other people say makes people sick, and in what way do they say it makes people sick)?

e.g. what is happening on a physical/molecular/cellular/biological level when weather changes make you sick, and what type of sick (do you get cancer, vomiting, contract smallpox, etc.?)

> 38.7C at Vicuña and Chiguinto hottest winter day for Chile;for Coquimbo even an all time high for any month.

> Remember:It's winter...

—https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1686535219350806528

> 1540 European drought - Extreme drought and heatwave lasting 11 months in Europe. [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves

And some more from years before 1900.

I don't understand what your comment is trying to say, care to expand?

This thread is full of people jumping to explain away a highly anomalous weather event as being something other than evidence that points modestly in favor of an overall changing climate.

It's just a fact, not an analysis: sometimes, in the past, there were episodic heat waves.

They aren't related to the ones we're having now (having the same causes, having the same impact, nor having the same scrutinity). But, nonetheless, they happened, and we haven't the same ammount of details to know if they were precedeed by hot years (like we're having right now) or they happened without any anormaly in the previous winter/summer.

More extreme climate events have happened before a single co2 was emitted by human machines.

You could move goal posts again and claim that we shouldn't expect completely unprecedented extreme events from climate change, just that somewhat extreme events are supposedly becoming more common than before. Even if that was true it doesn't matter because it's not convincing and undeniable.

So what was the previous record and when?

Winter record? Or all-time record? Because right now they are breaking all-time records in mid-winter. I'm not sure if the exact numbers really matter right now.

Not surprisingly as we increase the number of records we keep, we increase the number we break. Most of this monitoring is only going on for about 20 years.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/july-2023-is-hott...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves

We have been recording weather for a lot longer than 2003.

RTFA, the monitoring stations that are recording these temperatures are in remote areas where they and were placed less than 20 years ago.

Anywhere European nations had a port you'll find weather records going back to establishment.

South America was colonised more than 20 years past.

RTFA, the monitoring stations that are recording these temperatures are in remote areas where they and were placed less than 20 years ago.

> Most of this monitoring is only going on for about 20 years.

Ah yes, 2003, the year the thermometer was invented.

RTFA, the monitoring stations that are recording these temperatures are in remote areas where they and were placed less than 20 years ago.

I'll ignore your 20-years-point, the other commenters have that covered. But:

> Not surprisingly as we increase the number of records we keep, we increase the number we break.

No, it's the other way around. The more records we keep, the fewer maxima we should get.

The longer we keep records the fewer maxima, but as we add more individual records we will break more. These weather stations are in remote regions where recording began 20 years ago.

Having grown up on the eastern face of the Rockies, where temperatures could go from -15 C (a bit colder than normal) to 15 C (well above normal) in a matter of hours, I would also like some context.

Perhaps the best approach would involve an examination of trends, rather than chasing after events with shock value. The problem is, it's hard to grab people's attention like that. Some people seem to respond better to concrete, rather than abstract, events. Then there is the media's attention arms race, which distorts our world view by placing the extreme above the mundane.

It's interesting how we're already in August and places like Paris and Northern France are still at 21-22 degrees Celsius in the middle of the day [1], and I don't remember any heat-wave news that might have had involved France this summer (unlike past recent summers).

Looks like there's something happening over the North Atlantic [2], as the very hot hair present in Southern Algeria/Sahara seems to have become "trapped" in there, unlike in other summers, when it was managing to make its way up North eventually.

[1] https://www.ventusky.com/?p=49.5;3.4;5&l=temperature-2m

[2] https://www.ventusky.com/?p=49.9;-38.6;3&l=temperature-2m

It's a simple google search away [0]. There was a heatwave like 2 weeks ago.

[0] https://www-huffingtonpost-fr.translate.goog/france/article/...

I specifically mentioned "Paris and Northern France", the post that you linked to mentions Southern France.

I remember that in recent summers we had news items like this one [1], with temperatures in Paris reaching 36 degrees Celsius on August 3, 2022, 39 degrees on August 7, 2020 [2], and 42.6 degrees on July 26, 2019 [3].

But it looks like absence of news (no heat-wave for Paris this summer just yet, unlike in 3 of the previous 4 years) is not news anymore.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2022-08-france-2nd-year-paris-swelteri...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-07/paris-bra...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49108847

> I specifically mentioned "Paris and Northern France", the post that you linked to mentions Southern France.

You also involved all of France:

> > , and I don't remember any heat-wave news that might have had involved France this summer (unlike past recent summers).

I was thinking of the first part of the phrase, where I had already narrowed it down.

But my point stands, we have had no news this summer of “no heat-wave in Paris!”. Again, we’ve had news of heat-waves in Paris in 3 of the previous 4 summers.

Do you really expect an article stating "this thing that should be rare isn't happening in city XYZ!"? You'd have to put out such an article for every big city, there'd be nothing but.

We've had a few weeks with temperatures abnormally high for the period during June.

And until last week or so, the South of France has had very hot temperatures, too.

---

edit: According to Wikipedia, Paris is actually quite "normal". The daily mean is 20.9/8 in July/August, with averages between 16 and 26 ºC. This is pretty much what I've noticed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris#Climate

France had abnormal temperature in June with a complete full month (!) without rain at the time.

Right now it's back to normal weather.

Er, I share your concern for the environment, but I don't think we need to be concerned about it being not quite summery warm in august.

El Nino season is upon us

I would not be surprised if the Tonga Eruption has something to do with the current extremes [0]

0 https://www.space.com/tonga-eruption-water-vapor-warm-earth

Could be, water vapor is more potent than CO2 apparently.

We all share the same atmosphere. Is very hot in Europe also.

On the other hand, all those recent "captain chainsaw" clownery laughs and BS, surprise, surprise, it has consequences and some aren't so funny. Removing trees somewhere in Brazil will affect Uruguay.

Somehow, despite doing nothing except make it worse for decades, this problem has gotten worse. I for one am shocked by this clearly, repeatedly predicted outcome.

102F is hot?

I imagine its rare for that region, but compared to India/Pakistan temps, that is was underwhelming.

EDIT: OH ITS MID WINTER! Wow

Mid winter in the Andes and most of it pretty low south. It was supposed to be freezing cold.

> I imagine its rare for that region, but compared to India/Pakistan temps, that is was underwhelming.

Obviously the location matters. This isn’t a where’s the coldest/hottest competition.

Yeah, 102F is pretty hot, but it's insane for mid-winter. Downright terrifying to anyone who's been really watching this madness progress over past decades (as opposed to hiding their heads in the sand like so many have been until recently).

Average weather this time of year for them is highs of 59 and lows of 39, dropping down occasionally to freezing.