39
votes
Accepted
I just read news that Antarctica had set a new record high temperature, above 18 °C. How can this be the case if it is currently winter there?
You just read the news too fast. WMO announced that, after evaluation by a committee, they have validated the 18.3°C temperature recorded in February (i.e., in summer) last year:
GENEVA, 1 July 2021 (...
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36
votes
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Why is geothermal heat insignificant to surface temperature?
One kilometer of rock is actually a lot to dig through to get to that very warm condition.
The key quantity here is heat flux. The crux of the matter is:
Geothermal heat flux is only a small fraction ...
- 3,271
35
votes
Why is the temperature *still* rising?
"So much work"? Actually, compared to the global rate of greenhouse gas emissions, it's a case of "so little work"! From a scientific perspective the 'economists' solution' of carbon trading was ...
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33
votes
In the northern hemisphere summer, why are places in the north cooler than those in the south?
The image below (apparently from "physicalgeography.net" is somewhat instructive:
Notice that even in the middle of summer, India (at about 30 °N) still gets slightly more sun than the ...
- 777
29
votes
Accepted
Why is March colder than September in Northern Hemisphere?
The phenomenon is called seasonal lag.
There's a more extensive answer elsewhere on this site but the basic idea is that temperature lags behind insolation by several weeks, because it takes time to ...
- 10.9k
28
votes
Accepted
Where is the calmest place on Earth?
The main resistance that winds have to their movements comes from the topography and surface obstacles. Therefore, as a general rule the closer to the surface the less wind you will find. But I guess ...
- 17.3k
26
votes
Why don't green house gases escape into space?
The reason the atmosphere (including GHGs) stays attached to the earth is gravity. This is called the Hydrostatic Equilibrium. There is one GHG that this does not fully apply to: water vapor. While ...
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23
votes
Why is the temperature *still* rising?
Your premises are flawed due to the lack of two critical details:
Population rise; the sheer number of people on the planet that are consuming resources has risen to 7 billion people.
Standard of ...
- 12.9k
23
votes
Accepted
Do satellites decrease the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth?
Does this huge collective quantity of objects (together with space trash) reflect away enough solar radiation to have a measurable effect? Could this affect Earth's climate, mitigating climate change?
...
- 22.4k
23
votes
Why do colder climates have more rugged coasts?
Have you had a look at the northern coast of Russia or Alaska, in the cold Arctic? Having just looked at them on Google Earth, they are lengthy and seem very "un-rugged".
The northern coast ...
- 23k
23
votes
Accepted
Why do colder climates have more rugged coasts?
As Fred's answer and some comments wrote, this is of course not so generally true.
What is true is that many rough coasts were formed by past glaciation. Obviously you don't tend to get many glaciers ...
- 817
19
votes
Is the Unified Theory of Climate (Nikolov & Zeller) compatible with the AGW/GHG theory in any respect?
The paper you linked lists as its first reference Volokin and ReLlez, 2014; a paper that addresses the magnitude of the Earth's greenhouse effect. The validity of the paper you found largely hinges on ...
- 3,334
19
votes
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What was the highest temperature ever recorded on the surface of Earth?
The record the article is referring about seems to be the same as registered at Guiness World Records:
On 13 September 2012 the World Meteorological Organisation
disqualified the record for the ...
- 17.3k
18
votes
Accepted
Simple Climate Models that Predict Climate Change
It sounds like you are asking for a simple climate model that treats the globe as a homogeneous system. A Zero-dimensional energy balance model may be of interest (see this Penn State site ) which ...
- 12.9k
18
votes
If the earth is a globe, what causes temperature differences across lines of latitude?
Polar regions are colder than equatorial ones for a simple reason - geometry.
More specifically, it is caused by the greater angle of the Sun's rays to the surface of the Earth. As you go farther ...
- 3,208
18
votes
Accepted
What is the consensus among geologists about climate change being caused by humans?
First, a correction. Most climate scientists are climatologists rather than meteorologists. Climatology and meteorology, while related, are quite distinct sciences. Meteorologists and climatologists ...
- 22.4k
17
votes
Accepted
Looking for evidence against some points raised in Ivar Giaever's speech on climate change
Ivar's graph is mischievous in trying to imply that there should be an exact correlation. The global air temperature is not a good parameter to chart against CO2 emissions because the increasing heat ...
- 14.1k
17
votes
Why don't errors accumulate in climate models when the time horizon increases?
Error does accumulate in climate models out into the future -- that's why the forecasts include a range of possible results, that gets wider the further into the future you look.
See, for instance, ...
- 1,360
16
votes
Why do greenhouse gases affect ocean temperature so much?
No, greenhouse gases do not absorb infrared radiation from the sun... the Earth is really the source of infrared. The amount of infrared energy from the sun that reaches Earth is insignificant. ...
- 12.9k
16
votes
How to tell if a single day of weather is an anomaly or due to climate change?
I am interested in understanding how to tell if a single day of 'abnormal' weather is due to climate change or not.
You can't. The day-to-day, locale-to-locale variations in weather are huge compared ...
- 22.4k
16
votes
Is global warming nonsense?
No, global warming is not nonsense, and if you are suspicious of the above 'graph' then you are acting wisely.
Climate deniers, like flat Earthers, Biblical literalists and many more, use pseudo-...
- 14.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Why does the Inter tropical Convergence Zone shift?
On a broader scale the ITCZ and monsoons are related. This is because the global circulation shifts as a result of the tilt of the earth's axis relative to the orbit around the sun. In northern ...
- 4,779
14
votes
Accepted
Why do human populations concentrate near fault lines, volcanoes, etc.?
You're asking
Why do human populations concentrate near fault lines, volcanoes, etc.?
But the real question is
Do human populations concentrate near fault lines, volcanoes,
etc.?
And the ...
- 22.8k
14
votes
Accepted
Is Atacama Desert cloudy or cloudless most of the year?
The Atatacma desert comprise a very large area of more than 100,000 square kilometers, that host very different climates. The main factors driving the climatic variability are the distance to the ...
- 17.3k
14
votes
Why don't green house gases escape into space?
Trapping compounds and changing composition are two very different things.
The composition of an atmosphere is set by equilibrium chemistry. Equilibrium chemistry can be understood as mapping of a set ...
- 3,074
13
votes
Does the elliptical orbit of the Earth have effect on Earth's climate?
Short answer. When the Earth is closest to the sun in January that softens the seasonal variation in the Northern Hemisphere and it increases the seasonal variation in the Southern Hemisphere, so ...
- 5,747
13
votes
Is the Mauna Loa CO$_\mathsf{2}$ record affected by the nearby mantle plume?
How is ist possible that Mauna Loa Observatory is the International Reference Observatory for CO2 Global Meassurments
I don’t know that it is ‘the International Reference Observatory’. The Mauna Loa ...
- 5,401
13
votes
Accepted
How authentic was the movie scene in "The day after tomorrow" related to the understanding of the north Atlantic current system?
I'm not sure how much I can comment about it, but here we go (that's a joke... maybe).
Is it realistic in the collapse of the current system? Well kind of, but not in the timespan that is suggested. ...
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12
votes
Accepted
How does Antarctica stay frozen?
It doesn't stay frozen. Ice evaporates (or sublimates is the correct term) under direct sunlight, but that's at a molecular level, it doesn't melt, it goes from solid to gas under sunlight and in the ...
- 5,747
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