Yale e360: It's Not Just Climate Change: Three Other Factors Driving This Summer's Extreme Heat

[OKIsItJustMe]

E360 DIGEST
JULY 28, 2023

It’s Not Just Climate Change: Three Other Factors Driving This Summer’s Extreme Heat

Climate change may be, by far, the leading driver of this summer’s stifling heat, but three other factors are helping push the mercury to new extremes.

The first is the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha-apai, an underwater volcano near Tonga, in the South Pacific. Typically, volcanic eruptions unleash sulfur-based aerosols, which block sunlight, cooling the planet, but the Hunga Tonga produced only a small amount of aerosols. At the same time, it vaporized a large volume of seawater. That water vapor, a heat-trapping gas, could raise global temperatures by 0.06 degrees F (more than 0.03 degrees C) over the next several years, according to a recent study.

The second factor is a change in the amount of energy radiating from the sun, which rises and falls ever so slightly every 11 years. At the high point in this cycle, a surge in solar energy warms the Earth by around 0.09 degrees F (0.05 degrees C). The sun is now ramping up to its next peak, expected in 2025.

The third factor is that the Pacific Ocean is heading into its warmer El Niño phase, when balmy ocean waters radiate heat into the air. The last strong El Niño raised global temperatures by 0.25 degrees F (0.14 degrees C).

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[Think. Again.]

1. Great...

By stating the obvious (and putting their name on it) Yale just gave the deniers yet another angle to manipulate for their dis-information mills.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Let them mull on this...

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html

[Think. Again.]

3. A great site...

...but what goes unmentioned on that site (probably because it's already widely, though not widely enough) is the interdependent relationships between those variables.

The overlapping effects of each will spur negative activities in each other and disrupt the entire well-balanced system. That's where the phrase climate CHAOS comes in.

[Jim__]

4. The deniers will manipulate any fact they can to try to bolster their "case."

But their case is based on misrepresentations of the facts. Their misrepresentations can be used against them by clarifying the realities behind their misrepresentations. Most deniers, of course, aren't interested in the truth. But the clarification of the facts can be used to refute the lies of the deniers. We should not hesitate to present facts that complicate the arguments about climate change. The ultimate reality is clear.