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Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

Its unfortunate how many people are using the word "Climate" in their replies here. When Trump says "Its cold out, global warming is fake" we rightly say that it's Weather, not Climate. That's what this is too.

Global warming may be responsible to some degree, but we can't have it both ways. Language is important.

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I agree with your warning not to blindly conflate weather and climate, but the fact is that climate change is making record-breaking hot summers more common, and this summer is one of many observations that follow the overall warming trend. So a single record-breaking summer does not imply climate change, but an increased incidence of record-breaking heat waves is pretty much what defines climate change.

That's a dangerously mis-informed comment. Maximum and minimum temperatures over long periods of record are definitely climate, not weather.

Climate is generally defined as an average (of the maximums and minimums) over a 30 year period. So they're right in saying that this heatwave is weather, not climate. This summer will affect the calculated climate, sure, but it could be canceled out by an equally cold summer next year (unlikely, because the Earth is warming).

"The general or average weather conditions of a certain region, including temperature, rainfall, and wind. On Earth, climate is most affected by latitude, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the movements of the Earth's wind belts, the difference in temperatures of land and sea, and topography."

Extremes that shift are worrisome, outliers are not.

So if the range of observed temperatures for a region is -25 to 39 and you get a year where it is 45 then that's a very worrisome development because it indicates the climate range has expanded. This as opposed a year with 38 which would still be an outlier but not a shift in range.

> This summer will affect the calculated climate, sure, but it could be canceled out by an equally cold summer next year (unlikely, because the Earth is warming).

Why would a cold summer next year cancel out a hot summer ? If extremes swing so much it doesn't matter that the average stays the same.

As a one-off perhaps. It's not a one off though. 2019 is shaping up to continue the trend,and perhaps break yet another record.

"The average annual temperature for the European land area for the last decade (2009–2018) was between 1.6 °C and 1.7 °C above the pre-industrial level, which makes it the warmest decade on record. In Europe, 2018 was among three warmest years on record"

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/global-an...

These weather data points are direct confirmation of the climate change trend. It's been predicted and predictable that this will happen again and again. It'd only be news if it WASN'T happening. Therefore, It is absolutely appropriate to point to climate change here.

What scientists have been saying for years is that climate change will also result in more extreme weather events like this. People are right to say climate change is the cause.

I don't get the point of splitting hairs on the terms "climate" vs "weather".

However, the term 'global warming' should be avoided in favor of 'climate change', for obvious reasons.

the climate is more or less weather averaged over long periods. weather changes daily, climate changes over decades... recently. it used to take thousands of years.

I like the distinction (though not so much as seen in the GP comment) because the science behind things like ocean acidification seems much more sound and conclusive than some of the data I've seen on temperature increases (which can lead to more constructive discussion with deniers who at times, do have some valid points in counterarguments). It's not just about seemingly small increases in temperature - the effect of greenhouse gases is disastrous in other ways too.

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