Is the Earth really in danger of a hot catastrophe
Global warming has been replaced by the «epoch of global boiling»! This is how UN Secretary General António Guterres outlined the current climate picture last week, referring to data from Western climatologists. They stated that July 2023 turned out to be the hottest month in the world in the entire history of observations, and the entire current year has “added” compared to the average data from 16 to 17 degrees. Guterres' loud statement that the climate situation is reaching a peak coincided with the terrible typhoon «Doksuri» in China, and the world media literally began to panic, prophesying almost the death of all mankind in the very near future. We contacted a Russian climatologist, a leading researcher at Moscow State University. Lomonosov by Alexey YELISEEV to hear a more balanced analysis of what is happening in nature.
How did it all start? The UN World Meteorological Organization and the European Union Climate Change Service Copernicus said last week that July 2023 is «very likely» to beat the record set in July 2019 by 0.2 degrees Celsius. They also reported that heatwaves like those that are now hitting Europe, North America and China, the Earth, apparently, did not pass for about 120,000 years.
«We can say that the first three weeks July were the warmest three-week periods ever seen in our history,” said Carlo Buentempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Despite the rather cautious conclusions of scientists, Guterres, speaking in New York, decided to generalize and strengthen the effect, discarding all subjunctive moods: “We do not need to wait until the end of the month to be convinced of this. Short of a mini-ice age in the coming days, July 2023 will break all records across the board. In 2023, the average temperature on the planet has increased by a full degree compared to previous years, from 16 to 17 degrees. And this is just the beginning of the «boil».
— July, of course, can be the hottest in history, as a whole all summer and the whole year. But it can be unambiguously declared only when the data of meteorologists pass the so-called quality control. It is partly automated and partly done by hand. By and large, international data centers will publish the final result of the current year only by the middle of next summer.
— According to the British Hadley Center, 2022 was warmer than the average for the planet (taken period from 1961 to 1990) by 0.8 degrees.
— Firstly, we are not talking about 1 degree (Guterres, apparently, rounded the value.), but about 0.94 degrees, and this is still a very preliminary figure. Its uncertainty interval ranges from 0.84 to 1.03 degrees (that is, 0.19 degrees). In previous years, this interval was half as long — this is so that you understand the degree of reliability of the data for this year.
— I don't like all this talk about record years and record heatwaves, the events of individual months, which can be influenced by the seasonal course of temperature superimposed on the overall picture. This is not a running race! Each particular year can be a record year, but if we are talking about warming in general, we are only talking on a decade-wide basis.
Therefore, I would not take Guterres' statements too seriously. As an example, I will cite an absolutely tragic event in 2012 in the city of Krymsk, Krasnodar Territory. As a result of a severe flood caused by a three (!) times increase in precipitation, more than 100 people died then. But in subsequent years, this, fortunately, did not happen again.
— In general, for China, which is part of the so-called monsoon belt (it also includes India, Western Asia, East Africa ) is characterized by heavy precipitation at this time of the year. Their intensity depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference between the land and the ocean, where the monsoon is formed. As the climate warms, this difference is getting bigger, that's a fact.
— To be honest, I don't know a climatologist with that last name… He's a politician. Apparently, he needs to make loud statements. True, their prematurity does not increase the credibility of the speaker.