Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Bob Ward writing on the London School of Economics website, if we don’t name climate change induced heatwaves where temperatures exceed 82F, people won’t realise how deadly they are.
Is it time to start naming deadly heatwaves?
Commentary 23 July, 2019
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications DirectorA failure by the media to convey the severity of the health risks from heatwaves, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change, could undermine efforts to save lives this week as temperatures climb to dangerous levels.
Based on the experience of the last three summers, during which more than 2500 people across England were killed by heatwave conditions, hundreds of vulnerable people could die across the country in the coming days.
Public Health England has estimated that there were 863 “excess deaths” (PDF) during three heatwave periods last summer, which was the warmest on record in England.
…
The Met Office started in 2015 to name storms that were likely to have a significant impact in order to “aid the communication of approaching severe weather”.
Although heatwaves do not receive official names, a hot spell across parts of Europe during summer 2017 was nicknamed ‘Lucifer’ (PDF).
Far more people have died in the UK from recent heatwaves than from storms, so it should be uncontroversial to start applying names to both.…
A heatwave officially occurs when a location records a period of at least three consecutive days with daily maximum temperatures meeting or exceeding the heatwave temperature threshold, which varies by UK county between 25 and 28 degrees Celsius.
By contrast, the ‘Heat-health watch’ on the Met Office’s website lists “heatwave threshold values” between 28 and 32 degrees Celsius for different regions of the UK.
The Met Office’s website does, however, point out that climate change is increasing the frequency of heatwaves in the UK.
Read more: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/is-it-time-to-start-naming-deadly-heatwaves/
…
Where I live on the edge of the tropics, if the Australian MET started naming individual days or weeks when temperatures soar over 82F, they would run out of names.
While 863 or 2,500 excess heat deaths is a tragedy, Britain should probably be more worried about the massive spike in winter deaths, 50,000 excess winter deaths which occurred last year according to official figures, and the rampant British green energy fuel poverty which makes the elderly and other people with low incomes hesitate to switch on their air conditioners or heaters.
If you really want to scare people, you have to use numbers. BIG numbers.
Forget Celsius. That lowers the figures and aint scary enouhg.
How about this:
82F = 300.0278K
Run about shouting: “It’s over three hundred! We’re all gonna die!”
That should do it…
….it first reaches 82 degrees here around February and doesn’t start regularly dipping below that until November. I guess we’re all dead!
Can we call the first one Idiot’s Delight?
82 F most summers we don’t see it that low for almost four months running, present it 103 F it expected to get down to 87 tonight. If you listen to that idiot they would be no one alive here in the Phoenix metro area. PS we have a large homeless population, the heat kills less of them than the swimming pools kill children down here.
I like it when it is room temperature outside.
🙂
What about the title of the television programme “It ain’t ‘alf ‘ot mum”
The summer of 1976 here in the U.K. would have exhausted three alphabets of names, and we didn’t have rain for the same period. We called it a hot summer, even though it was a heatwave (3 days of temperatures more than a certain threshold, which varies centred round London, 25 degrees Celsius for most counties including Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, 26 degrees for a few counties eg Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, 27 degrees e.g. Leicestershire and 28 degrees for London https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/temperature/heatwave).
And now in this heatwave temps are TEN DEGREES CELSIUS HIGHER than 1976.
You obviously weren’t there. At the beginning of that summer I stopped off in Monkton Wyld on the way home. Had an afternoon sleep because it was so hot. The thermometer showed 110F.
Not true,
The highest temperature recorded in June 1976 was 35.6 C (96.08 F) in Southampton on the 28th.
Whilst 35.9 C, (96.6 F) recorded in Cheltenham, was the highest July temperature that year.
For 15 consecutive days, from June 23 to July 7 in 1976, temperatures reached 32.2 °C (90 °F) somewhere in England.
Therefore recent temperature high was 38.7c in Cambridge (2.8C, not 10C higher), but back then the heat didn’t come from North Africa in a windy southerly flow.
You do of course remember that there was an accompanying drought in the UK. I repeatedly, say that the Minister fro Drought, Mr Lim Howells, said for things tochange it would have to rain between now (Sept?) & November? Well guess what that ghastly creature Mother Nature do to us poor Brits? Yep, it rained almost every day as “demanded” by the Minister for Drought! Iworked at the time as a young draughtsman (draftsman for Colonials), & remember watching the official preview of the film made by the Thames Water Authority as it as then known, showing “gangers” at Locks & Weirs wearing thick Donkey jackets & Wellington boots scarbbling about in the squleching mud, with the narrator saying things like, “& the heat & drought continued”, etc. It was all rather amusing for everyone subjected to the spectacle! 😉 That’s the trouble with making a documentary about a weather event months after it ended! AtB
1976 summer followed a dry 1975 and a winter with low rainfall.
Following the appointment of a Minister for Drought the heavens opened and it kept raining through the following Autumn and Winter. Farmers had a problem cultivating their fields to sow winter wheat.
A similar wet period occurred in Winter/Spring 1983 when it was so wet farmers were unable to turn their cattle out until late June and grass dilate was cut two months late with a resulting low quality.
This had a spin-off effect with milk quotas introduced in 1984 being based on 1983 milk production, which was much reduced due to the poor quality feed in 1983.
During the heatwave in 1976 the old timers were all saying that 1926 was much hotter and drier.
@John Collis No. The Met Office is not a reliable source.
A British heatwave was when the max temperature was above 30 degC, as indicated by the newspaper headline “Phew, what a scorcher!”
32° ? I use to live in Thailand in wintertime, theres a steady heatwave from 30 to 36 °C all the time :))
How about calling them B000001, B000002 etc. B for bollocks and numbering ad infinitum.
Well lets see: this week saw western Europe’s second heatwave of the summer…
New high temp records in Netherlands and Germany (twice… new higher record on a second day), Belgium and provisionally the UK… new record for Paris.
We are talking 38C in the UK rather than a more usual 25C… 30C would definitely be a UK heatwave.
this is way beyond any definition of normal.
What in hell is your point, if you have one? Other parts of the world are very cool this summer, e.g. Alberta, home of “dirty oil.” Should we draw a correlation between increased use of wind power and hotter summers?
Suck it up, princess! Adapt, move, or die!
What you and everyone in the alarmist camp have failed to understand (because you’ve been *instructed* to fail) is that there is no such thing as normal and never has been. “Normal“ is a construct of warmist doctrine, period, end of story.
Honestly, try to do some thinking of your own.
@Griff Bullshit.
Only one area in SE England reached 37c or more and the last time it reached 38c was back in August 2003. Western Europe’s two heatwaves have only just breached the threshold in duration for being classed as an heatwave. In a period of 16 years the record has been beaten by 0.2c, not scary at all really or unexpected.
The definition of normal for the UK is usually the average mixture of Atlantic driven weather and continental type weather with high pressure. Either of these are normal, but an average temperature of these isn’t and hot air direct from North Africa is rare indeed. With it occurring rarely some places were always at the risk of record temperatures. The year 2003 was also the last time in summer the heat had moved north from North Africa, although back then it took longer (about 5 days) to reach the UK. A difference being it moved slowly less North over the UK and mainly hit the SE for a time while Atlantic systems were approaching from the west giving much cooler weather for others.
The source of where the heat come from was not beyond definition of normal as it regularly has temperatures very high there at this time of year.
The Brits I worked with in Oman would leave 28 degC heat wave conditions in England and land in +50 degC in Oman and, would you believe it, they all lived. We never had a heat induced lost time injury. The dumb$hits at the Met need to get out more. 28 degC heatwaves- spare us the drama
I find the medicine worse than the malady.
John Fletcher
“which are becoming more frequent due to climate change”
Repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat ad infinitum until it is firmly fixed in the public psyche.
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth
You just know the lunatics have taken over the asylum when one of them proposes naming nice summer days that allow ice cream sales to take place in the UK.
Today in the UK we are back in long trousers (unless you are a postman/woman) because the very pleasant summer weather over the past week, has come to its normal end.
Summer 1976 was the warmest summer for England since 1910, and was during a cold AMO phase. It occurred on the same type of configuration of the inner three gas giants as the 1934, 1949, 2003, and 2017 heatwaves.
Warmist? You mean hottest. I was a student that year and the summer holiday was extraordinary. I swam in the sea everyday, sometimes twice; helped where possible fire beating as large forest fires raged through the New Forest almost daily; only wore shorts for about a month; slept with sheet only (or not) for about a month; A friend recalled how his shoes melted into the pavement on Westminster Bridge; the Thames almost dried up.
The more people spend time indoors and not interacting with the outside world the less they understand it. In addition the ability to quantify danger gets worse and less reliable.
I was also a student then in Farnborough Hampshire, and remember the huge fires on Surrey Heath very well.
1st July 1913: Men cover their heads with newspapers to protect them from the summer sun. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/englands-record-heatwave-in-1911/
“When New England was experiencing arguably its worst heatwave on record in July 1911, Old England was having an equally remarkable one of its own. Official figures show it was the second hottest summer on record, beaten only by the even more exceptional summer of 1976.”
100F was recorded at Greenwich
In Australia we already have names for weather events over 28C, in the southern states we call them January, February and March. In the northern states they are called October, November, December, January, February, March and April.
For humans, 40 degrees C is a nice temperature if you are naked and out of the sun. 20 degrees C in the shade will kill you if you are naked.
Absolutely correct, humans evolved on the open plains of sub Saharan Africa where 40C is typical. I have spent a lot of time working in north western Australia where everyday is 37-40C and after you acclimatise it is comfortable and feels natural. You have to drink a lot and protecting yourself from the sun is sensible but not as urgent a it is in the cooler south where the atmosphere is thinner.
It’s official. Climate science is trying to destroy humanity, making them into whiney wimps incapable of dealing with life. 82F???? I am heat sensitive and can still play outside at that temperature. How terribly idiotic can they get?
Naming heat waves is as useless as naming winter storms. Really, I can’t tell you what name was given to one winter storm since they started. I can sometimes remember hurricanes. Why don’t we name tornados? Sure, they are short-lived, but they are violent. How about floods??? They can last a long time. Name the floods. And droughts. Let’s just go completely insane with this. It’s obvious those climate people and journalists honestly think any of us know or care about their name on a byline and believe names have magical powers. What an arrogant uneducated out-of-touch group of humans we are dealing with here. They are far more of a threat to our future than any heat wave, climate change, etc.
82F… sounds like a nice day for a barbecue.
Heat waves are caused by weather and not climate. There are some places where greater than 82 degrees F heat waves occur most of the year. Maybe in naming every time the temperature gets to be 82 degrees F they should name every time the temperature drops below 62 as a cold spell. They should also name every precipitation event and every event where there is no precipitation for at least 7 days as drought events. They should probably give all of these events numbers. They should also name wind events, lack of wind events, Fog events, overcast events, and lack of overcast events as well.
I agree with giving heatwave names, and so I suggest we name the first one as Bob Ward 1, and the second one as Bob Ward 2, and the third one as Bob Ward 3, and the forth one as Bob Ward 4, and the fifth one as Bob Ward 5, and the sixth one as Bob Ward 6, and the seventh one as Bob Ward 7, and the eighth one as Bob Ward 8, and the ninth one as Bob Ward 9, and the tenth one as Bob Ward 10, and the eleventh one as Bob Ward 11, and the twelfth one as Bob Ward 12, and the thirteenth one as Bob Ward 13, and the fourteenth one as Bob Ward 14, and the fifteenth one as Bob Ward 15, an the sixteenth one as Bob Ward 16, and the seventeenth one as Bob Ward 17, and the eighteenth one as Bob Ward 18, and the nineteenth one as Bob Ward 19, and the twentieth one as Bob Ward 20, and the twenty-first one as Bob Ward 21, and the twenty-second one as Bob Ward 22, and the twenty-third one as Bob Ward 23, and the twenty-forth one as Bob Ward 24, and twenty-fifth one as Bob Ward 25, and the twenty-sixth one as Bob Ward 26, and the twenty-seventh one as Bob Ward 27, and the twenty-eighth one as Bob Ward 28, and the twenty-ninth one as Bob Ward 29, and the thirtieth one as Bob Ward 30, and the thirty-first one … … … … …
Where I live, we’ll get up to Bob Ward 101 this summer alone. We only get a week or two worth of 100 degree days at most, but a high temp of 82 sounds like nirvana to me.
There’s however average temperature.
So naturally, nature too is working on temperatures below, and on temperatures above average.
The respective names are
– coldspell and
– heatwave.
What am I missing.
Just for the sake of honesty, we did have a highly unusual high pressure area settle over south central Alaska in May and June, and in the stagnant air and very long days temperatures climbed to the high 80s for several days. I didn’t like it one bit. I found a couple of people that last remembered something like this happening in 1969. Everyone I spoke to took it in stride, suffered through it, and was very happy when the temps finally went back down to the 50s in July. One professor at the University of Alaska immediately blamed the heat on climate change of course, and was widely quoted by the press, but I didn’t find one normal person who actually shared that viewpoint. Having said that, I will be very happy if I don’t see such heat again for a few decades.