Comments by "Old Scientist" (@OldScientist) on "US braced for extreme weather as Hurricane Beryl and West Coast heatwave strike | BBC News" video.

Heat waves have not been increasing in intensity or frequency in the United States, which has by far the best meteorological data both spatially and temporally. Data from NOAA's Climate Reference Network shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since 2005 when that network began. In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less severe than they were in the 1930s. At that time Heatwaves were more than 6 times worse with greater frequency and covering a larger area than the last decade (EPA). The most severe heatwave year was 1936, and was about 13 times worse than current. Many states in 1936 achieved temperatures 15° hotter than the present. The all-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century. The percentage of US Historical Climatology Network Stations reaching or exceeding 95°F (35°C) was at a record low (1895-2023) of 51% in 2023. The record high was 1931 at 93%. The trend has been consistently downwards since the thirties. The climate crisis was 90 years ago. You missed it.
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@michaelfisher7170 I can't deny the data but it seems you can. America has by far the best instrumental data, and it shows overall the South East cooled in the last 120 years. Though that sentence doesn't do justice to the climate's variability. Data from NOAA (2021) shows uneven warming in the twentieth century focused on the South East through until it peaks in the 1930s. Where it should be noted the highest average maxima temperature records remain to this day. Some areas of the West showed negligible warming. There then followed a general continent-wide cooling into the 1970s. Then the West began to warm, but the South East continued to cool, so that by the end of the century some SE areas were cooler than they had been a century before. This pattern of uneven warming continues up to the present day. That's the data. It's not mine. It's NOAA's.
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@catherinewilliams9680 If you're worried about deaths due to climate, cold temperature events are the big killer, not heat. It is estimated that 5.1 million people annually die in association with non-optimal temperatures. 4.6 million are linked to the cold, so over 90% (Zhao et al, 2021). And it is worst in the warmer parts of the world. 98% of temperature related deaths in SubSaharan Africa are due to the cold. Temperature events may be linked to upto 10% of human deaths annually. In a warming world there will be less death. There are over 5 million excess deaths per annum globally due to abnormal temperatures from the 2000-2019 study led Prof. Guo of Monash University. It found that over 90% of excess deaths were caused by excess COLD rather than excess heat. So, in a world with increasingly mild temperatures, there will be less excess death. Lives will be saved. Warming is good not bad. A 2022 Lancet study reported 791 heat-related excess deaths and 60,753 cold-related excess deaths in England and Wales each year during the years spanning 2000-2019. That’s an excess death ratio of about 85 to 1 for cold vs. hot temperatures. Due to warmer urban temperatures, the number of premature cold-related excess deaths avoided averaged 447 per year from 1976-2019 in the city of London alone (Hajat et, 2024).
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@catherinewilliams9680 "As regards disease, the Lancet's Countdown on Health and Climate Change (2019) shows Climate-related deaths are a small proportion of all-cause fatalities (1990–2017). That is based on data per IHME (2019), and between 1990 and 2017, the cumulative age-standardized death rate (ASDRs) from climate-sensitive diseases and events (CSDEs) dropped from 8.1% of the all-cause ASDR to 5.5%, while the age-standardized burden of disease, measured by disability-adjusted life years lost (DALYs) declined from 12.0% to 8.0% of all-cause age-standardized DALYs. Thus, the burdens of death and disease from CSDEs are small, and getting smaller. However, the declines in death and disease rates from CSDEs since 1990 are only a small proportion of longer-term declines across the globe. In the USA, one of the few places with good long-term data, death rates from dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal diseases, and malaria – all water-related diseases and therefore, almost by definition, climate-sensitive declined 99–100% between 1900 and 1970. We are solving our problems with CSDEs faster than we are solving our other health problems." Indur M. Goklany
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Globally the ACE index (accumulated cyclone energy) 1980-2021 shows no increasing trend. Global Hurricane Landfalls 1970-2021 (updated from Weinkle et al, 2012) shows no trend. Satellite data since 1980 shows a slight downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers with 2021 being a record low year. From the NOAA GFDL website 'Global Warming and Hurricanes, An Overview of Current Research' (dated Feb. 9, 2023). And I quote "We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes." Multidecadal variability in Atlantic hurricaines is most probably related to the AMO (Vecchi et al, 2021). NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. There is also no trend in the frequency of major hurricanes (Cat 3 +) for the same period, although the trend for the last 20 years is downwards. It makes no difference if you look at the Pacific. Using data from the JMA 1951-2022 we see typhoon activity trending downwards for over 7 decades.
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@MegaDeano1963 The EPA website referring to Heat Islands states "in the United States, the heat island effect results in daytime temperatures in urban areas about 1–7°F higher than temperatures in outlying areas and nighttime temperatures about 2–5°F higher." However even this is an underestimate as the Urban Heat Island effect can result in temperatures 10°F (5°C) higher during the day (Scientific American, 2019). This alone explains any record high temperatures. And as I'm sure you're aware, Las Vegas is in a desert, which is characterised by long summers and extremely high temperatures. And that's exactly what's happening. There's nothing unusual or unexpected here. Hope this helps.
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