Why Europe Keeps Being Pummeled by Heat Waves (nytimes.com) 110
Europe is facing its fifth round of dangerously high temperatures this summer, the New York Times reports. Now climate scientists wonder if global warming is doing more than raise temperatures...
The weather patterns that create heat domes aren't new, but today they arise on top of the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. That makes it more likely that heat waves reach record-shattering temperatures for long stretches. But other environmental changes — natural, human-influenced or both — might also be causing heat domes to become more frequent and longer lasting. And it's these changes that scientists around the globe are trying to puzzle out.
One change has to do with the Arctic. The differences in temperature between the hot Equator and the frigid far north help keep weather moving around the Northern Hemisphere. But with the top of the world now warming at several times the pace of the rest of the globe, those temperature gradients are narrowing. That might be causing the movements of weather systems to become more sluggish, producing more persistent heat waves. In Europe, reduced air pollution could be having a similar effect. Industrial emissions can contain particles called aerosols that reflect sunlight. Curbing aerosols has improved air quality, but it may also have altered the way air moves across the continent.
Scientists haven't come to firm conclusions about how these shifts might be affecting European summers, said Antje Weisheimer, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford. The complex, fine-scale interactions in the atmosphere that drive weather dynamics are tough to capture in computer simulations, Dr. Weisheimer said. "It's tricky," she said. "We're making small progress."
Dim Coumou, a professor of climate science at the Dutch university VU Amsterdam, sees artificial intelligence as one way forward. In a recent study, he and his colleagues used an A.I. algorithm to help a weather model better predict summer temperatures in Europe. They not only improved the model's forecasts; they also discovered why some of the model's predictions had been off: It misrepresented the way conditions in the western Pacific Ocean influenced atmospheric patterns that eventually made their way to Europe. With A.I., "we can also learn what the climate models are missing," Dr. Coumou said.
One change has to do with the Arctic. The differences in temperature between the hot Equator and the frigid far north help keep weather moving around the Northern Hemisphere. But with the top of the world now warming at several times the pace of the rest of the globe, those temperature gradients are narrowing. That might be causing the movements of weather systems to become more sluggish, producing more persistent heat waves. In Europe, reduced air pollution could be having a similar effect. Industrial emissions can contain particles called aerosols that reflect sunlight. Curbing aerosols has improved air quality, but it may also have altered the way air moves across the continent.
Scientists haven't come to firm conclusions about how these shifts might be affecting European summers, said Antje Weisheimer, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford. The complex, fine-scale interactions in the atmosphere that drive weather dynamics are tough to capture in computer simulations, Dr. Weisheimer said. "It's tricky," she said. "We're making small progress."
Dim Coumou, a professor of climate science at the Dutch university VU Amsterdam, sees artificial intelligence as one way forward. In a recent study, he and his colleagues used an A.I. algorithm to help a weather model better predict summer temperatures in Europe. They not only improved the model's forecasts; they also discovered why some of the model's predictions had been off: It misrepresented the way conditions in the western Pacific Ocean influenced atmospheric patterns that eventually made their way to Europe. With A.I., "we can also learn what the climate models are missing," Dr. Coumou said.
Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Literally there's about 3 or 400 people who are going to destroy the entire planet except for a small section of it that they will be allowed to live on protected by automatic killbots and periodic Mass cullings.
And your Boomer uncle is all in favor of it as long as he doesn't have to look at trans people or let them drink his beer.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Trying to burn the country to the ground so we can rebuild a better one?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The hilarious thing is that all the subsequent generations - with the exception of Gen Z - made the same mistakes, ignored the same warnings and differed the same measures as the Boomers did, no difference at all. As for Gen Z, they do not hold political power and they sound just like the Boomer kids did when they were young held no political power.
So if you are not Gen Z. take a look in the mirror when you start hurling blame. If you are Gen Z, I hope you hang on to your principals as you age.
Re: (Score:1)
And your Boomer uncle is all in favor of it as long as he doesn't have to look at trans people or let them drink his beer.
I disowned my right-wing relatives. I don't have any such boomer uncles anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the rich do a disproportionate amount of damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without many, many people buying their products. The rich don't create industrial pollution for the hell of it (at least most, maybe there are a few that just like to destroy). They are creating pollution on your behalf.
If you take an airplane without really needing to, if you buy a larger house or car than you need, if you eat more than you should... you're
Re: (Score:1)
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the rich do a disproportionate amount of damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without many, many people buying their products.
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the poor consume products which do ecological damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without rich people deciding it's what they will be allowed to buy.
If you take an airplane without really needing to, if you buy a larger house or car than you need, if you eat more than you should...
Come on now, leave some billionaire cock for the rest of us to suck.
Re: (Score:2)
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the rich do a disproportionate amount of damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without many, many people buying their products.
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the poor consume products which do ecological damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without rich people deciding it's what they will be allowed to buy.
If you take an airplane without really needing to, if you buy a larger house or car than you need, if you eat more than you should...
Come on now, leave some billionaire cock for the rest of us to suck.
None of these problems would exist if there were only 10 percent the present amount of people, and if humanity returned to teh lifestyle that we evolved from.
One could make a plausible case that the roots of all this was when humanity started practicing agriculture.
Re: Yeah... (Score:2)
So your solution to shit billionaires is to return to being hunter gatherers? I do not think you will find many other to enlist in your scheme.
Re: (Score:2)
So your solution to shit billionaires is to return to being hunter gatherers? I do not think you will find many other to enlist in your scheme.
Yaknow, given population growth, and most of the world wanting a first world lifestyle, Nature won't need to enlist people to hunter gatherer lifestyle. Might be more like a compulsory draft.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But they *do* create industrial pollution.
You can cast blame on individuals for their "carbon footprint", but don't forget that that concept was invented by the petroleum industry to take the heat off of them.
Yes, we who participate in society are all making the problem worse. But none of us individual consumers, by our own abstention, can meaningfully inflect the trajectory. To align all our actions enough to actually make a dent, we'd need to either all band together and refuse to buy this stuff *at the
Re: (Score:2)
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the rich do a disproportionate amount of damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without many, many people buying their products. The rich don't create industrial pollution for the hell of it (at least most, maybe there are a few that just like to destroy). They are creating pollution on your behalf.
If you take an airplane without really needing to, if you buy a larger house or car than you need, if you eat more than you should... you're also contributing to global warming and the general degradation of the environment. It is a collective problem, not the fault of a few individuals. If all the rich suddenly distributed their money to the general fund, the problem would still exist. People want to maintain their lifestyle.
If we got rid of 90 percent of humanity, or returned to hunter gatherer ways, we wouldn't need to worry about airplanes or houses or overeating. I solved the problem much better than you.
Depends on how you wish to take my statement, Unironically that is the fix to human's altering the environment excessively by placing humanity as just one part of the environment. And preventing us from influencing it any more than natures other creatures. Of course, few of us want to live on the edge, and to die in our
Re: (Score:2)
If we got rid of 90 percent of humanity, or returned to hunter gatherer ways
Those are two entirely different things, and one way to achieve the first is voluntary birth control. Other ways include pandemic, war, and famine, all of which I for one consider suboptimal.
few of us want to live on the edge, and to die in our 30's.
"30's" would be life expectancy at birth, which is heavily biased by infant and child mortality [ourworldindata.org]: "As recently as two centuries ago, around 1 in 2 children died before reaching the end of puberty."
Council on Foreign Relations [cfr.org]: "In 1800, for example, global life expectancy was estimated to be just twenty-nine years. Th
Re: (Score:2)
If we got rid of 90 percent of humanity, or returned to hunter gatherer ways, we wouldn't need to worry about airplanes or houses or overeating.
Or if, you know, we developed ways to generate and use that don't produce carbon dioxide emissions, and ways to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it, then we wouldn't have to slaughter billions and return to a subsistence lifestyle.
Can we maybe try a carbon tax for a couple of decades first? We can always do the murdering later. Given the birthrate trends, if we wait a century the population will crash without doing anything.
Re: (Score:2)
If we got rid of 90 percent of humanity, or returned to hunter gatherer ways, we wouldn't need to worry about airplanes or houses or overeating.
Or if, you know, we developed ways to generate and use that don't produce carbon dioxide emissions, and ways to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it, then we wouldn't have to slaughter billions and return to a subsistence lifestyle.
Can we maybe try a carbon tax for a couple of decades first? We can always do the murdering later. Given the birthrate trends, if we wait a century the population will crash without doing anything.
We still have the problem of resource management. The earth is not an endless supply of what we need for civilization, and there are limits to recycling.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] We hear how people are going to stop having children. Well, yeah some groups are. But I remember when 8 billion was crossed a few years ago, now we are at 8.3 billion - .3 billion added in just a few years. That's 1 USA worth of population. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
So - what is your solution? How do we get that
Re: (Score:2)
We still have the problem of resource management. The earth is not an endless supply of what we need for civilization, and there are limits to recycling.
What resources are we short on?
Re: (Score:2)
We still have the problem of resource management. The earth is not an endless supply of what we need for civilization, and there are limits to recycling.
What resources are we short on?
Water is a big one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. There is much prior evidence that we are willing to kill each other for fresh water.
As human population increases, and weather patterns change, some places will become arid, others enjoy increased rainfall. The leads to so called "climate migration" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. although an increasing number of humans eventually creates the same effect even if a person does not believe in the energy retention effects of an atmosphere based upon
Re: Yeah... (Score:2)
Sounds like an argument for degrowth, which has growing support in Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the rich do a disproportionate amount of damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without many, many people buying their products. The rich don't create industrial pollution for the hell of it (at least most, maybe there are a few that just like to destroy). They are creating pollution on your behalf.
If you take an airplane without really needing to, if you buy a larger house or car than you need, if you eat more than you should... you're also contributing to global warming and the general degradation of the environment. It is a collective problem, not the fault of a few individuals. If all the rich suddenly distributed their money to the general fund, the problem would still exist. People want to maintain their lifestyle.
This argument comes up a lot. My one counter?
The rich, the owner class, the would-be oligarchs like to make global decisions for the rest of us, and continually assert that they are the drivers of all things. They promote the idea that their superior wealth makes them superior human beings. They seem to believe that they are unto gods, and their will absolutely *IS* the creator of our reality. If they want to believe all that, more power to them, but then they get to shoulder a little more of the burden for
Re: (Score:2)
And your Boomer uncle is all in favor of it as long as he doesn't have to look at trans people or let them drink his beer.
Recent survey by the Human Rights Campaign [hrc.org] [possibly biased, of course]: "The survey, commissioned in February 2026 by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation .... Large majorities of Americans support equal rights and protections for transgender Americans (85%), as well as equal access to healthcare (89%), workplace protections (79%), and protections for transgender students (83%)."
Maybe more relevant: "41.2% of U.S. adults say they know someone who is transgender. ... [but] only 27% of Americans report reg
Re: (Score:2)
I mean I guess yeah technically since Elon Musk and Jeff bezos are lizard people but I think they're native lizard people rather than the usual batch of aliens we get.
Literally there's about 3 or 400 people who are going to destroy the entire planet except for a small section of it that they will be allowed to live on protected by automatic killbots and periodic Mass cullings.
And your Boomer uncle is all in favor of it as long as he doesn't have to look at trans people or let them drink his beer.
What a stupid comment, I think you have set some kind of a record.
Re: (Score:2)
Look at the good side, people won't have to move south when they retire any more. It will be warm where they already live.
Interestingly enough, on average I run the heat pump in cooling mode about 22 days a year. So far this year I've used it 8 days.
The heat pump is in heating mode from continuously from mid-October to Mid-April. It will be a long time before that balances out up here at 47 degrees North.
Re: (Score:3)
The parts of Europe we are talking about are far far far further north than 47 latitude. ..
Mainz is 52 latitude north.
Rome is 48 latitude north.
And then comes Hamburg, London, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Edinburgh and so on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are right, Mainz is 50 latitude. No idea why I made mistake there.
There is a bronze/brass marker on the road where the latitude goes.
You are right about Rome, too. it is 42. NYC is 48. I mixed that up.
Re: (Score:1)
Pssht! Don't say that out loud, or we need to love bomb y'all with Nostalgia Max [1]....
https://insidejob.fandom.com/w... [fandom.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Europe? What about North America? (Score:5, Informative)
We've had heatwave after heatwave after heatwave, and we still have another month of summer. Where I live 5% of the state is on fire, the National Weather Service regularly predicts "Smoke" as the weather. The air quality index is actually advertised as -1, I have no idea what that means, but it can't be good. For weeks at a time the sunrises and sunsets are orange in color because of the smoke. This is not a European problem, it's an everywhere problem. Not only do we have to stop human carbon from going into the atmosphere, but we have to remove energy from the system. Reducing population won't do it. Reducing pollution won't do it. We need to take very drastic and expensive steps to reduce the amount of energy hitting the planet from the Sun. Solar panels won't cut it, wind power won't cut it, nuclear power won't cut it. We have to block it. And then try and restore our atmosphere.
It's true everything is collapsing everywhere (Score:1)
Collapsing before our eyes. It's like how we blame cell phones on everything wrong with kids and not the ludicrous amounts of pressure we're putting on them because we know the entire economy and job market is collapsing and there aren't going to be enough jobs available for the number of people capable of working them so we're all hoping our kid is going to get the edge and be allowed to have a home and a car and food and medicine.
As far as I can tell the entire economy is collapsing around you and you kno
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We caught a guy who was setting fires over here. In large part due to video surveillance.
More Flock cameras is the answer.
Re: (Score:2)
How many structures did that mentally ill guy burn down before he finally got the psychological treatment he needed in the first place?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Europe? What about North America? (Score:4, Informative)
Arsonist #2
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/... [yahoo.com]
Arsonist #1, the big fire
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/10... [cnn.com]
There was also a fire caused by a car crash on a mountain road.
It's normally tinder dry this time of year in the Cascade's rain shadow so it doesn't take much to start a fire.
Re: (Score:2)
We caught a guy who was setting fires over here. In large part due to video surveillance.
More Flock cameras is the answer.
Unfortunately, it's the answer to the question: "How do you find someone who has ALREADY started a deadly fire?"
Re: (Score:2)
...but we have to remove energy from the system. Reducing population won't do it.
Thanos enters the chat > Actually...
Re: (Score:2)
Some of their countries shut down all their clean fuel sources and only burn russian oil, increasing global warming in their feverish chase of stopping global warming.
You mean those countries who have lower CO2 output now than before thanks to investing in things other than Russian gas as well? Those countries? Or are you talking about the countries who can't keep their nukes running because of the high temperatures, low river levels, or jellyfish? And you realise the shutdown had nothing to do with global warming, and not a single person claimed it did until in 2026 a particularly stupid AC on Slashdot attempted to make that comparison?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was in Ontario last month when the wildfire smoke was coming through. The AQI was pegged at 500 for two days.
Re: (Score:2)
The air quality index is actually advertised as -1, I have no idea what that means, but it can't be good.
Sounds like either missing data or a mistake. The Air Quality Index is confusing, because it's actually the Air Danger Index: larger numbers are worse [airnow.gov].
Currents (Score:2)
Thought I read in a similar article that the Atlantic currents are slowing as well, which normally moves air around, and so it's just sitting on Europe.
And that this is only going to get worse with that current in collapse?
Re:Currents (Score:4, Informative)
No, if that current collapse, Europe is going to freeze. That current cools down Northern America and warms up Europe. That's why you have snow storms and it's cold in Montreal in the winter while comparatively a lot warmer in Paris France and Paris is farther up North than Montreal.
Paris 48.8567 N
Montreal 45.50889 N,
variability of a stable system is persistent (Score:5, Interesting)
The people of Europe are learning what the farmers on Southern Ontario learned 30 years ago. Even if the average doesn't change the weather has significantly changed. Average temperature is a terrible measure for climate change. It might be easy to explain but it lags the real change by 30 years.
Re: (Score:2)
IQ is bunk because it is influenced by education and practice. Therefore it is not a measure of raw intelligence potential.
Re:The quiet part slipped out (Score:5, Informative)
Now, how about a successful prediction? Something reasonably precise, non-trivial and impactful, please — falsifiable, yet not falsified in due time... If you choose to play, be sure, each citation includes two links: one to the prediction being made, and another — to it coming true within at least 20% of the predicted value (for the quantifiable ones). Crucially, the two links must be at least 5 years apart...
And I'll even help! You can find the predictions in the IPCC assessment reports, all of which are easily available on the web. Here's the very first one, 1990:
The scientific basis: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar1... [www.ipcc.ch]
The impact assessment: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar1... [www.ipcc.ch]
Re: (Score:1)
fuck you're an idiot
It's been reported quite a lot. Get your favorite search engine to show them to you. Or get your favorite AI to summarize it to you.
Why are climate change deniers always so completely and utterly retarded?
Predictions versus reality [Re:The quiet part ...] (Score:3)
Please, sift through your massive documents yourself
Yes, I've noticed that climate deniers are highly allergic to reading actual science, and in particular will do anything at all to avoid looking at IPCC reports, so I'm not surprised that you want me to read the reports and summarize them for you, so you can argue with me instead of actually learning anything.
to cite a couple of "precise, non-trivial and impactful" predictions. I assume, you've read the documents you're offering as evidence yourself, so it wouldn't be much of a burden for you. Thank you!
In fact, as a hobby I've been keeping a graph of the predictions based on the Manabe and Wetherald model (1967, the first greenhouse effect model using detailed CO2 infrared spectra and incorporating c
Re: (Score:2)
Please, sift through your massive documents yourself
Yes, I've noticed that climate deniers are highly allergic to reading actual science, and in particular will do anything at all to avoid looking at IPCC reports, so I'm not surprised that you want me to read the reports and summarize them for you, so you can argue with me instead of actually learning anything.
The sad thing is the physics is so simple that children can figure it out. feel the sunlight on your skin? That is energy. The earth is receiving energy from the yellow thing some 93 Million miles away.
So now, we can skip ahead to the earth and its atmosphere. A long time ago, Joseph Fourier noted that the earth was warmer than the amount of energy received from the sun could account for, not much later, Eunice Newton Foote, a scientist, performed experiments that confirmed that the composition of atmosp
Re: Predictions versus reality [Re:The quiet part (Score:2)
I'll add that the greenhouse effect is the tool we use to understand the temperatures of ALL planets with atmospheres (and one moon), not just Earth.
(In fact, I can say that I have personally measured the infrared downwelling from the atmosphere on Mars (using the mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer on the Mars Exploration Rovers).)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll add that the greenhouse effect is the tool we use to understand the temperatures of ALL planets with atmospheres (and one moon), not just Earth.
(In fact, I can say that I have personally measured the infrared downwelling from the atmosphere on Mars (using the mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer on the Mars Exploration Rovers).)
And that is about as cool a thing as I can imagine!
Re: (Score:2)
You're not paying me to be your research assistant. So far I've given four links-- you have given none-- and for three of them you explained why you're not going to read them, and one you simply ignored. Since you show not even a casual interest in the links I already gave, I see no reason to spend any of my time giving you more links to ignore.
The one you ignored is this one:
For a more scholarly summary, here a paper from the American Geophysical Union: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.... [wiley.com]
As for
P.S. Calling me "an idiot" or "denier" is not going to work :-)
Yes, I've noticed that deniers don't like being called deniers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, some had been off? Ok, nice to see an acknowledgement of that.
Let me guess, you saw the word "model" and got triggered into thinking they were talking about scientists modelling climate change, despite those models having being insanely accurate on a global scale, instead of the localised weather models actually being discussed and which are wildly more complex and have improved continuously over the past 5 decades?
Do we need to explain to you that local weather != climate like a 5 yearold, AGAIN? Pay attention in school kid.
Somebody Tell Me. (Score:2)
TFA is paywalled. Somebody tell me what it says. Is it because God hates them for being gay?
List of historical heat waves (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He's so deep in the cult and it's sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, if everything you know about this year was that someone used the word heatwave you may come across that conclusion. In the meantime please go through all those you just cited, show us where we have experienced 6 successive heatwaves in one season without any rain between them. We'll wait while you continue to embarrass yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
The answer (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I misread that as fires, which do seem to have been implemented this year.
Somewhat related, and with the business of disrupted weather patterns, in Canada, there have been a lot of fires, the West coast has been baking.
While here in PA, we're inundated with rain - the ground is saturated, and every new storm brings flooding. I wish we could send about half of that water out west.
And while I don't think we've had any 90+ degree days here, it isn't cooling down much at night. mid 80's during the day, mid 70's at night.And I only recall one day the humidity dropped below 99 pe
fart more (Score:1)
Don't let MAGAs hear this, they are itchin' for an excuse to pollute and deregulate.
Re: (Score:2)
twas oscillation, I know (Score:2)
There are all sorts of global oscillations in the oceans and atmosphere that are poorly understood. Tying specific weather events to these oscillations is speculation, not science.
Re: (Score:2)
Noisy and large and expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's also address the issue of European dwelling construction and comfort: They are designed to absorb heat and minimize drafts - which is terrible for old-school AC's that try to cool the air as quickly as possible - creating cold clamy moist air. I've been in one such home with a Big old oversized AC. It is just gross. Modern units, like the technology mentioned above, deal with this "Stagnant" air perfectly by removing moisture form the air(by modulating the compressor to a lower setting and lower fan speed over a longer duration). This enhances comfort much more than simply lowering temperature and is ideal for those people who keep the place sealed tight.
Someone posted a chart which claims China is the largest producer of greenhouse gasses. If that is true, then I have to say at least China is making amends in a way with the new affordable and efficient HVAC technology. So, Europeans, I love you, but don't mock progress, give it a try, figure out a way to make it work - the only limit to this is yourselves!