World's Worst Heatwave – The Marble Bar heatwave, 1923-24

Alex
The North Pole had its coldest summer ever. Central Siberia was cold. What happened in Moscow was just weather.

The Inland Sea of California, 1862:
“The floods of December 1861-January 1862 were even more severe, making news around the world (see the pages from the Illustrated London News below). This deluge created an inland sea that spread over thousands of acres, deep enough that boats could sail over the tops of telegraph poles in the Sacramento Valley. ”
The Indians told the new Californians of an even worse one, where the entire Valley was inundated for 3 months.
The Settlers out here came because of the balmy winters. Not 30 years afterwards, you could find them talking of climate change, for the weather had turned cold, biting the hand of agriculture, and stayed that way for decades.
Nevertheless, after all the climate changes of the past 160 years, today, the floods in Pakistan, noted for such, is all about Anthropogenic Climate Change, and has Hillary Rodham Clinton doing a dance with a very dour face.

Mark S
“The reason the Russian heatwave gets coverage is that people are dying, wildfires are burning, flights are canceled, and crops are dying. ”
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The reason the Russian heatwave gets so much coverage is that we have instant media, satellite TV, the Internet, Co2 alarmism, mobile phones, apps etc.
There is nothing to see here Mark S, move along, move along.

NOAA said on 13 August 2010
“…greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave.”

What about the Pakistan floods, the heatwaves of Japan, the warm spell in western Europe and the unusual weather in the US and Canada last month?

“According to meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere, unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. As a result, weather systems sat still. Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes. ”
source
“Blocking events naturally occur from time to time. There is evidence that low solar activity increases their numbers , and the sun is currently in a period of minimum activity”
source

What about the fires in Russia’s boreal forests, are they on the increase?

“Some contradictory evidence in the literature has led authors to question the likelihood of seeing an increase in boreal wildfire risk under warming of the Northern Hemisphere. Despite warming since about 1850 and increased incidence of large forest fires in the 1980s, a number of studies indicated a decrease in boreal fire activity in the last 150 years or so.”
Source: Girardin, M.P., A.A. Ali et. al. 2009. Global Change Biology, 15, 2751–2769 [pdf]

For those who still persist on blaming co2 on these recent weather events here is a word of caution from two journalists at the Guardian.
Guardian 6 January, 2010 – George Monbiot and Leo Hickman

“Britain’s cold snap does not prove climate science wrong
Climate sceptics are failing to understand the most basic meteorology – that weather is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends”

Mark S
“The reason the Russian heatwave gets coverage is that people are dying, wildfires are burning, flights are canceled, and crops are dying. ”
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Are people dying from heat OR from Vodka, other hard drinks and drowning?
See here, here.
Here is what alcohol is estimated to do in Russia each year:

“Such booze-induced accidents are typical in Russia, where, according to some estimates, alcohol is responsible for over 400,000 deaths a year—whether through heart disease, accidents, suicides or murders.”
Source: The Economist 29 July, 2010

Alex:
2. This happened NEVER, just NEVER before in Moscow.
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I dont buy this. if you go through Russian history the fires and heat waves are a frequent occurence. Many famous Russian writers write about. It looks like a constant to me in that region. If I am not mistaken someone in an earlier posting on the Russian heatwave made a posting listen some of them.

Debate settled…
According to our very own Sec. of State, weather IS climate…or something.
“Clinton said that on top of the Pakistan floods, which have forced millions out of their homes, the forest fires in Russia stand as another example. She said there’s no “direct link” between the disasters in Pakistan and Russia but that “when you have the changes in climate that affect weather that we’re now seeing, I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/21/clinton-links-pakistan-floods-climate-change/
JimB

Pascvaks :
Some of them do not remember things that happen while they are alive. Each and every event is the worst or best that ever happened depending on which side of the fence they are on and which fantasy they want to believe in.

richard telford says:
August 22, 2010 at 2:44 am
REPLY: You really ought to read the whole article before jumping to an erroneous conclusion and making an accusation that I “made it up”. By definition, a heat wave is duration based.
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“Nowhere in this article do you justify describing this as the worst heat wave. Your sources do not use the word “worst”. It would be reasonable to define worst in terms of mortality or economic/ecological damage. Its not reasonable to make up the definition.”
Give yourself a break and drop the strawman. Anthony refers to temperature and global warming, not mortality or damage, and Marble holds the *world record* for *heat*wave. In context, it is the “worst”.

richard telford says:
August 22, 2010 at 2:44 am
“[…]Nowhere in this article do you justify describing this as the worst heat wave. Your sources do not use the word “worst”. It would be reasonable to define worst in terms of mortality or economic/ecological damage. Its not reasonable to make up the definition.”
Do you complain to the NYT, the BBC, the ABC etc. etc. to hold them up to your high standard every time they report to a worst this or a worst that?

LucVC and Alex
Courtesy of WUWT bloggers, a translation from Russian of accounts of previous fires
Here are some interesting historical accounts of forest and peat fires in Russia dating back to the 13th century. There occur every few decades. I can’t be bothered to translate it all, but have translated a selection. If you have any doubts, you can find yourself a translator. As for death rates, one can only guess.
1298: There was a wholesale death of animals. In the same year there was a drought, and the woods and peat bogs burnt.
1364: Halfway through summer there was a complete smoke haze, the heat was dreadful, the forests, bogs and earth were burning, rivers dried up. The same thing happened the following year . . .
1431: following a blotting out of the sky, and pillars of fire, there was a drought – “the earth and the bogs smouldered, there was no clear sky for 6 weeks, nobody saw the sun, fishes, animals and birds died of the smoke.
1735: Empress Anna wrote to General Ushakov: “Andrei Ivanovich, here in St Petersburg it is so smoky that one cannot open the windows, and all because, just like last year, the forests are burning. We are surprised that no-one has thought about how to stem the fires, which are burning for the second year in a row”.
1831: Summer was unbearably hot, and as a consequence of numerous fires in the forests, there was a constant haze of smoke in the air, through which the sun appeared a red hot ball; the smell of burning was so strong, that it was difficult to breathe.
The years of 1839-1841 were known as the “hungry years”. In the spring of 1840, the spring sowings of corn disappeared in many places. From midway through April until the end of August not a drop of rain fell. From the beginning of summer the fields were covered with a dirty grey film of dust. All the plants wilted, dying from the heat and lack of water. It was extraordinarily hot and close, even though the sun, being covered in haze, shone very weakly through the haze of smoke. Here and there in various regions of Russia the forests and peat bogs were burning (the firest had begun already in 1839). there was a reddish haze, partially covering the sun, and there were dark, menacing clouds on the horizon. There was a choking stench of smoke which penetrated everywhere, even into houses where the windows remained closed.
1868: the weather was murderous. It rained once during the summer. There was a drought. The sun, like a red hot cinder, glowed through the clouds of smoke from the peat bogs. Near Peterhoff the forests and peat workings burnt, and troops dug trenches and flooded the subterranean fire. It was 40 centigrade in the open, and 28 in the shade.
1868: a prolonged drought in the northern regions was accompanied by devastating fires in various regions. Apart from the cities and villages affected by this catastrophe, the forests, peat workings and dried-up marshes were burning. In St Petersburg region smoke filled the city and its outlying districts for several weeks.
1875: While in western europe there is continual rain and they complain about the cold summer, here in Russia there is a terrible drought. In southern Russia all the cereal and fruit crops have died, and around St Petersburg the forest fires are such that in the city itself, especially in the evening, there is a thick haze of smoke and a smell of burning. Yesterday, the burning woods and peat bogs threatened the ammunitiion stores of the artillery range and even Okhtensk gunpowder factory.
1885: (in a letter from Peter Tchaikovsky, composer): I’m writing to you at three oclock in the afternoon in such darkness, you would think it was nine oclock at night. For several days, the horizon has been enveloped in a smoke haze, arising, they say, from fires in the forest and peat bogs. Visibility is diminishing by the day, and I’m starting to fear that we might even die of suffocation.
1917 (diary of Aleksandr Blok, poet): There is a smell of burning, as it seems, all around the city peat bogs, undergrowth and trees are burning. And no-one can extinguish it. That will be done only by rain and the winter. Yellowish-brown clouds of smoke envelope the villages, wide swaithes of undergrowth are burning, and God sends no rain, and what wheat there is in the fields is burning.