Not terribly significant. The length, number of heat records broken, and sheer catastrophic scale of this heatwave is unprecedented. We don’t have any reason to think anything remotely like this has happened in human history, and the fact that we didn’t have the means to track the entire planet’s average temperature prior to 1979 doesn’t negate that.
Hawaii is on fire. Oregon is on fire. Canada is on fire. California is on fire. The winter in the southern hemisphere is unprecedentedly warm, and much of Australia burned over their summer. It’s going to burn again.
I can’t find any indication that 1979 had a 36-day heatwave with anything approaching the temperatures we’re seeing.
I think the significance of 1979 is that’s when we started keeping track of an overall global temperature day by day…
Not terribly significant. The length, number of heat records broken, and sheer catastrophic scale of this heatwave is unprecedented. We don’t have any reason to think anything remotely like this has happened in human history, and the fact that we didn’t have the means to track the entire planet’s average temperature prior to 1979 doesn’t negate that.
Hawaii is on fire. Oregon is on fire. Canada is on fire. California is on fire. The winter in the southern hemisphere is unprecedentedly warm, and much of Australia burned over their summer. It’s going to burn again.
This is an emergency.