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A comment on Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record. Parent comment

Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by somenameforme on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:06PM (#36818070)
The highest temperature ever recorded was in Death Valley, in 1913. [1] Hence the reason for this weird 'at midnight' metric. It also holds another pretty neat record of having 43 days with temperature over 120 each day. That was in 1917. The planet's definitely warming up, but seeing every single freak weather occurrence, let alone in an area uniquely geographically situated for such, as a 'sign' of the end times isn't going to serve much purpose.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley

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Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by fullshark on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:43PM (#36818615)
The purpose is people are swayed by compelling anecdotes, not data. These types of anecdotes will continue to get pubished for the foreseeable future partially for political purposes, partly because data is dry and these types of things are compelling.
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Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by basisword on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:50PM (#36818741)
>> The purpose is people are swayed by compelling anecdotes, not data.

The purpose is people are swayed by fear and these anecdotes create fear. As much as I want us to do much more to tackle climate change, scaring ordinary people whose individual actions don't count for much is simply the media trying to make money. It's getting tired and annoying.

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Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by Timon3 on Friday July 21, 2023 @04:44PM (#36819445)
But it's those same ordinary people who have to change their voting patterns to do something against climate change. What if creating fear is the only way to sway them towards saving most of humanity?
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Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by aodin on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:47PM (#36818697)
> A higher reading of 134F, or 56.6C a century earlier, also in Death Valley, is disputed. It is believed by some modern weather experts to have been erroneous, along with several other searing temperatures recorded that summer.

> According to a 2016 analysis from weather historian Christopher Burt, other temperatures in the region recorded in 1913 do not corroborate the Death Valley reading

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53788018

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Re:Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record by hosh on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:13PM (#36820652)
Of more interest is how high the daily low. Being in a desert area, there are large temperature swings between the lows and highs. Midnight shouldn't be the low -- that would be about the hours before dawn. Basically, we're looking at a situation where the temperature had not cooled off enough during the night before the sun starts baking things again.

Metro Phoenix where I live, has been having lows in the mid-90s these past couple weeks. Part of that is the heat island effect from all the asphalt, concrete, but it means even after the sun is down, we are having 100+ degree temperatures here during the evenings.

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