Under punishing temperatures, firefighters have struggled to get a northern California wildfire under control as another heatwave prompted excessive heat warnings throughout the state.

The Beckwourth Complex fire, a combination of two lightning-caused blazes burning 45 miles north of Lake Tahoe, had doubled in size between Friday and Saturday.

A wildfire in southern Oregon is threatening transmission lines that carry imported power to California, prompting the California Independent System Operator to ask for assistance from other states.

Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, issued two emergency proclamations to allow for more power capacity and to relieve pressure on the electric grid.

Temperatures soared in the inland and desert areas of California as fires burned in the north. In California’s agricultural Central Valley, Fresno reached 111F (43.9C), one degree short of the all-time high for the date.

Temperatures in Death Valley reached 130F, the highest high recorded since July 1913, when Furnace Creek desert hit 134F – largely considered the highest measured temperature on Earth.

The temperatures are at most minimally affected by climate change.

Cliff Mass

"Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No."

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/was-global-warming-cause-of-great.html

Chuck Wiese

"Journalist Stu Cyrk published the technical explanation by Chuck Wiese which includes calculations.

Wiese recognized past heatwave records in the Portland area and was initially skeptical of forecasts of the records being broken by numerical weather models because the models are frequently wrong.

“These only became believable as the model output became repetitious in several runs as we got within 2 days of the expected extreme temperatures. This is common practice in operational meteorology to become suspicious of model output extremes especially since we have seen many occasions where extremes in temperature or precipitation given by models back off from those predictions and self-correct within a couple of days of an extreme event. But it turns out the numerical model output in this situation was correct several days in advance.”

Weise then looked at greenhouse gases.

“The water vapor optical depths of the 1981 heat wave and today’s extremes were nearly identical as taken off the atmospheric soundings from Salem, OR. Therefore, that wasn’t the reason. What about atmospheric CO2? In 1981, the Mauna Loa CO2 level was given as 341 ppmv (parts per million volume) whereas today it is 416 ppmv. In calculating the change in radiative forcing from CO2 as a stand-alone constituent, the difference from 1981 to now is only 1.07 Wm-2. (Watts per square meter).”

He then goes through his calculations in degrees Kelvin. Using the correct scale for such calculations is important. Weise calculated that the CO2 effect was

“…0.15 degrees Centigrade [Celsius] (deg C) or a possible contribution of +.27 deg F to the heating total. “Therefore, CO2’s contribution to this heat wave is far too small to even move the thermometer upwards from the 107 deg F old records to a measurable whole degree F. And this is not even measurable with many of the degree of accuracy specifications of many thermometers.” ”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/12/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-46...

Ayn Marx wrote on Jul 13^th, 2021 at 7:01am:


That's what happens with over reliance on Weather Dependent Renewables. Hot temperatures - every one who can cranks up their A/C's. More drain on the grid.

Ayn Marx wrote on Jul 13^th, 2021 at 7:01am:


According to the IPCC the 1913 temperatures can't be the fault of AGW.

BTW - Who says there is no such thing as climate change? Climate has changed since time immemorial. Glaciation, interglacial periods.

"Ancient tree stumps found under glaciers in Southeast Iceland are confirmed to be roughly 3,000 years old, RUV reports. A specialist believes the remarkably well-preserved stumps were part of a massive forest that disappeared after a long period of a warm climate.

It is believed that 3,000 years ago, the forests were much larger, even reaching the highlands. Approximately 500 BC, the climate became colder, and glaciers began to form, destroying parts of the forests.

The planet has been here billions of years, with mankind only having been here for the last million or so.  In that time, the planet has changed climates several times."

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/12/melting-glaciers-revealing-ancient-tree-s...

https://www.ruv.is/frett/drumburinn-3000-ara-gamall-og-fell-i-skyndi

Original link in Icelandic.

Wow it must have been warmer 3,000 years ago for thee tree stumps to have lived then.

A Science Magazine article published today says climate scientists faced the alarming reality that “climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist”.

The report's authors face a challenge that many of the world's leading climate models, used for the report's projections, are now showing warming rates that most scientists believe are implausibly fast because of errors in rendering clouds.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6554/474

Didn't count the clouds right, eh?