Our Hottest Decade

The last decade was the hottest on record but this decade, the 2020s, is blowing the doors off it.   And, when it comes to heat, America remains Number One.

What could be the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth - 130F (54.4C) - may have been reached in Death Valley National Park, California. 

Sunday's reading was recorded in Furnace Creek in Death Valley. 

Before this, the highest temperature reliably recorded on Earth was 129.2F (54C) - also in Death Valley in 2013.

The heat is expected to peak today and tomorrow but California could be in the grip of this heatwave for another 10 days.  The demand for electricity for air conditioning is already taxing the grid to its limits causing officials to implement rolling, 2-hour blackouts, to keep the system from crashing.

Last week it emerged that climate scientists were taken by surprise by the second consecutive year of tundra wildfires in Siberia.

Some regions are expected to really bake this decade including parts of South America, Central America, the Middle East and South Asia.

Heatwave duration , although increasing, has significant trends restricted to South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. Significant heatwave intensity trends are non-existent for most of the globe, the exception being southern Australia and small areas of Africa and South America. On the other hand, significant cumulative heat trends are comparable in space to heatwave frequency, with mainly positive magnitudes. The largest trends are seen over the Middle East and parts of Africa and South America, where the extra heat produced by heatwaves is increasing by 10 °C/decade−1. For most other areas with significant trends, cumulative heat increases by 2−6 °C decade−1.

I find it difficult to process this information without recalling the study out of the University of Hawaii several years ago predicting that a heating phenomenon, called "climate departure," would begin setting in to the same areas as listed above starting around 2023.

In February, Bloomberg reported that the climate science community's once staid models were suddenly running read hot.

There are dozens of climate models, and for decades they’ve agreed on what it would take to heat the planet by about 3° Celsius. It’s an outcome that would be disastrous—flooded cities, agricultural failures, deadly heat—but there’s been a grim steadiness in the consensus among these complicated climate simulations. 

Then last year, unnoticed in plain view, some of the models started running very hot. The scientists who hone these systems used the same assumptions about greenhouse-gas emissions as before and came back with far worse outcomes. Some produced projections in excess of 5°C, a nightmare scenario. 

The scientists involved couldn’t agree on why—or if the results should be trusted. Climatologists began “talking to each other like, ‘What’d you get?’, ‘What’d you get?’” said Andrew Gettelman, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, which builds a high-profile climate model.

Europe has also been baking with the UK recording six consecutive days above 34 C. Germany and France have endured the same conditions. Engineers in Britain are reporting that all that magnificent Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian infrastructure is "inadequate" for the climate emergency.

Heatwaves are growing more likely in the UK, with 2020 on course to be the hottest year on record. Engineers and infrastructure experts are growing increasingly concerned that vital infrastructure – from homes and buildings to transport, water and energy networks – is unable to cope with the added strain. Several pointed to last week’s Stonehaven derailment, in which three people were killed and many more injured.