A great heat dome explanation/graphic, Andrew. The simple truths of high to low movement of heat transfer and fluid pressure has got to be grasped by all.
Have become a cooldowner. Every method to mitigate heat 🥵 is my current interest. Then it gets cold. And I forget. One day it might not get cold.
Thanks, Andrew, for reposting that. As a thermodynamicist -- that doesn't study atmospheric science very closely -- I'm wondering if you have a numerically-precise definition for a heatwave. Is it based on relative increases in temperature or on precise, absolute temperatures? If it's the latter, then as you said with the "rising tide" analogy, climate change that creates higher average temperatures create more heatwaves. However, if it's the former, that an increase in higher average temperatures doesn't. I'm asking because this clearly
affects the meaning/interpretation of much of the article. :-)
there is no single definition of a "heat wave" (in fact, people can't even agree on whether heatwave is one or two words). but it is usually defined to be temperatures over some number of days that exceed some percentile temperature of a baseline period (e.g., 3 days of temps above 95th percentile). b/c climate change pushes temps up, it will increase the number of days above the 95th percentile.
A great heat dome explanation/graphic, Andrew. The simple truths of high to low movement of heat transfer and fluid pressure has got to be grasped by all.
Have become a cooldowner. Every method to mitigate heat 🥵 is my current interest. Then it gets cold. And I forget. One day it might not get cold.
Thanks, Andrew, for reposting that. As a thermodynamicist -- that doesn't study atmospheric science very closely -- I'm wondering if you have a numerically-precise definition for a heatwave. Is it based on relative increases in temperature or on precise, absolute temperatures? If it's the latter, then as you said with the "rising tide" analogy, climate change that creates higher average temperatures create more heatwaves. However, if it's the former, that an increase in higher average temperatures doesn't. I'm asking because this clearly
affects the meaning/interpretation of much of the article. :-)
there is no single definition of a "heat wave" (in fact, people can't even agree on whether heatwave is one or two words). but it is usually defined to be temperatures over some number of days that exceed some percentile temperature of a baseline period (e.g., 3 days of temps above 95th percentile). b/c climate change pushes temps up, it will increase the number of days above the 95th percentile.
We wrote a paper showing how climate would impact heatwaves under a number of different definitions (back in CMIP5 days): https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EF000943