[MCN] So far in February, some areas are already as hot as or hotter than they usually are in July -- “insane”, “total madness” and “climatic history rewritten”

[Lance Olsen]

EXCERPT

The first half of February shocked weather watchers. Maximiliano Herrera, who blogs on Extreme Temperatures Around the World <https://twitter.com/extremetemps>, described the surge of thousands of meteorological station heat records as “insane”, “total madness” and “climatic history rewritten”. What astonished him was not just the number of records but the extent by which many of them surpassed anything that went before.

He said Morocco had seen 12 weather stations register over 33.9C, which was not only a national record for the hottest winter day, but also more than 5C above average for July. The northern Chinese city of Harbin had to close its winter ice festival because temperatures crept above freezing for an unprecedented three days this month.

In the past week, monitoring stations as far apart as South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Japan, North Korea, the Maldives and Belize have registered monthly heat records.

In the first half of this month, Herrera said 140 countries broke monthly heat records, which was similar to the final figures of the last six record hottest months of 2023 and more than three times any month before 2023.

Ocean surface heat continues to astonish seasoned observers and raises the prospect of intense storms later in the year. The hurricane specialist Michael Lowry <https://twitter.com/MichaelRLowry?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor> tweeted that sea surface temperatures across the Atlantic main development region, where most of the US category 3 or stronger hurricanes form, “are as warm today in mid-February as they typically are in middle July. Incredible.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/17/february-on-course-to-break-unprecedented-number-of-heat-records


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“Seventy percent of the outcomes of the energy transition depend on people changing their energy consumption, behaviors and lifestyles.”

https://www.ey.com/en_gl/power-utilities/three-ways-to-move-energy-consumers-from-interest-to-action

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