Glimmers of Tropical Hyperborea

This is apparently the hottest temperature ever registered in the Arctic (100F ~= 38 Celsius). There’s a good chance that 2020, an already very powerful year, will also become the hottest year on record (PredictIt now puts it at 50/50).

And it’s not even getting boosted by an El Nino, with very low levels of solar irradiation.

All in all, things are certainly looking scorching for climate accelerationism.

Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

  2. Siberia is looking to be prime real estate sometime this century, which doesn’t bode well for China-Russia relations. You have to wonder whether some of the genocidal tendencies of the Chinese Communist regime were not negotiated population reductions. That and their lack of warheads defending a significant population advantage is only perplexing if you ascribe such behavior to conventional models. Russia and America hold the preponderance of nuclear arms, maybe it is not too late to write off a future where these two are still the only actual players around?

  3. maybe it is not too late to write off a future where these two are still the only actual players around?

    Do you really want a state where the BLM/woke ideology rule to be a player? The most important future challenge for the world is how to remove all nuclear weapons from the USA.

  4. Good news for the northern sea trade route. Bad news for Somali pirates.

  5. Malenfant says

    How do you know how many warheads they have? Going to take their word for it, or the word of some NGO?

    All indications are that China has got significantly more than they let on. Their military is famously opaque, and habitually plays their cards close to their vest, which looks like a winning strategy right now.

    Besides, China’s industrial and mineral extraction capacities are second to none, and they have significant uranium deposits; any lack of warheads right now does not imply that they won’t be able to manufacture more in vast quantities if and when necessary.

  6. inertial says

    The kind of weather we expect by 2100, 80 years early.

    This guy calls himself “climate specialist” but doesn’t understand the difference between the average and extreme right tail. “BS Atmospheric Sciences Cornell University.” Right.

  7. jimmyriddle says

    Global dimming caused by pollution has fallen due to KungFlu. That might be a factor.

  8. ThreeCranes says

    This is great news. We’re being driven out of our homelands here in the temperate zone by invaders from the tropics. It’s time we headed north on the edge of the retreating glaciers just as we did 12,000 years ago.

    Sorry, Anatoly, we’re on our way, like it or not. They’re pushing us so we’ll be pushing you.

  9. china-russia-all-the-way says

    The China-Russia relationship keeps on getting better. But on both sides there is a lack of vigor to seize the initiative. Things are moving in the direction of a Russo-Chinese political alliance as a reaction to aggressiveness by the US. The alliance is prodded along by the inexorable threat posed by the US to Russia’s sphere. There is the prospect in the early 20s of thousands of additional US troops stationed in Poland from Germany and Western encouraged regime change in Belarus.

    From Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council:

    For example, Chinese corporations and financial institutions are effectively complying with the U.S. sanctions against Russia. Beijing is not inclined to support Moscow on the “Ukrainian issue” and does not recognize Crimea as a part of Russia. Moscow, in turn, is not ready to consider the territorial disputes in the South China Sea exclusively through what we might term the “Beijing prism,” nor does it side fully with China in its disputes with India and Vietnam.

    China supports Russia in keep its sphere intact in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucus. Russia supports China in keeping India and Vietnam from tilting towards the US. And there is joint coordination over Central Asia.

    Plus, Russia should really emphasize to China the self-interest of supporting Russia in Syria. In this area, I especially see a lack of imagination and initiative.

  10. 100 °F on June 27, 1915 in Fort Yukon, Alaska (Latitude 66.56 N)
    99 °F on July 28, 1919 in Fairbanks, Alaska (Latitude 64.83 N)

  11. Belarusian Dude says

    More usual boomer stuff about China wanting to invade Russia for lebensraum is always funny

  12. Belarusian Dude says

    Also, while here, I want to say Russia will certainly benefit more from global warming than other countries but tropical hyperborea is a silly meme. Once the ice thaws Siberia will be a smelly gaseous swamp, not some green paradise crops and epic trad homes can be built in.

  13. The familiar mercury thermometer was not invented until early in the 18th century – 1714 – in Amsterdam by physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit.

    Therefore, there is no instrumental temperature record for any place on Earth that is much more than 300 years old. The oldest daily instrumental temperature record dates from 1772, just 248 years.

    With only 248 years of hard instrumental data out of the 4.5 billion-year age of Earth, there’s a lot about our planet we don’t know.

    Verkhoyansk is known to have one of the greatest annual temperature ranges of any place on Earth. I don’t know the length of the temperature record for the northern Russian town, but I’d suggest it’s almost certainly been warmer than 100.4° F there on numerous occasions in the remote past.

    https://www.iceagenow.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Warming-Periods-in-last-10000-years-1024×604.jpg

  14. Once the ice thaws Siberia will be a smelly gaseous swamp

    This is definitely not true. The “excess” water will flow down rivers into the ocean or be absorbed by the growing vegetation. With a humid climate in a warming Siberia, there will be Northern jungles like those that are now growing in the Russian far East

    https://ds05.infourok.ru/uploads/ex/0177/000ee20e-44cc5baf/hello_html_m47afc887.jpg

    http://kuriles1.ru/img/gallery/14.jpg

    In a dry climate (which is more likely) – steppes a La Altai

    http://s4.fotokto.ru/photo/full/311/3113538.jpg

    https://sun9-66.userapi.com/c852220/v852220455/16999c/3QBmkzPzyPY.jpg

  15. Blinky Bill says
  16. This is in the current climate. When warming should be as in the current Crimea

    http://fotorelax.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Africa-in-the-Crimea-08-1024×681.jpg

  17. More and more ancient viruses will be waking up from hibernation.

  18. Hartnell says

    Honestly I think that after this warm summer, Russia will have a very cold winter. I don’t think anything is too unusual. Well I hope not.

  19. Heh. On the other hand, here it’s rainy as hell, like, autumn weather

  20. Europe Europa says

    I recently learnt that Vladivostok was a Chinese city until relatively recently. I’m amazed how little known that is, by anyone other than the Chinese themselves really.

    The British get harshly criticised for their colonial legacy all the time, yet Russians have engaged in blatant colonialism and still do to this day and get away with it. The world is certainly unfair.

  21. Bies Podkrakowski says

    Doesn’t that mean more mosquitoes?

  22. Anonymous lurker says

    That’s a bit of an exaggeration. In the Vladivostok area there were minor fishing villages, populated by Manchu and so on. By the time Russia annexed the territory in the mid-1800’s, there certainly were not even any traces of any prior “cities” ever having been there, and hardly any natives around either.

    Russian “colonialism” had to do with expansion over land(*) and that typically started when somebody attacked her. Like the Khanates that were at constant war with Russia and that Ivan IV conquered, leading to the first large east- and southward expansion, or the Crimean Tatars and their endless slave raids (and a few proper large invasions) into Russian lands, that Empress Catherine II put an end to by annexing Crimea in 1776, or the conflicts with various other Ottoman satellites/vassals in the Caucasus that eventually led to war and that major southward expansion.

    That’s not to say that the Russians always were nice to their “colonized” subjects, but the manner with which it all happened was a vastly different thing to the British Empire.

    And I recall as late as 2014, in the lead-up to the Winter Olympics, that there was constant raving about the poor Circassians (who had the Sochi region as their native lands, one among many tribes that have, in the past).

    That there isn’t much hollering about the Siberian stuff is probably because even though there was conflict associated with it, and people did die in somewhat large numbers here and there, it wasn’t all that bloody, exploitative and genocidal by world wide colonialism standards (as set by the Brits).

    (*) Mostly. Hawaii, Alaska, some islands in BC and Fort Ross in CA were exceptions, short lived and on a rather small scale, and they got along fine with the natives.

  23. Erik Sieven says

    prime real estate usually is found at the sea shore, or at least at big lakes. Vast, dry areas will not turn into prime real estate

  24. Daniel Chieh says

    Manchu, not a Chinese city. Not really populated. Its overall vastly less irritating than Anglo efforts to completely wipe out the entire culture in their regions to replace it with a “colonial culture” while hypocritically claiming that it is a form of improvement.

  25. another anon says

    Also, while here, I want to say Russia will certainly benefit more from global warming than other countries but tropical hyperborea is a silly meme. Once the ice thaws Siberia will be a smelly gaseous swamp, not some green paradise crops and epic trad homes can be built in.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-siberia/

    Radical warming in Siberia leaves millions on unstable ground

    The permafrost that once sustained farming — and upon which villages and cities are built — is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and odd bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless.

    Due to thawing permafrost — along with the demise of Soviet-era state farms — the area of cultivated land in Yakutia has plummeted by more than half since 1990. The region’s cattle herds have shrunk by about 20 percent, to 188,100 head in 2017 from 233,300 in 2011. Reindeer herds have also declined sharply.

    What is strange – 10 years ago, AK knew that there will not be any winners in global warming.
    I do not understand where is the new optimism about “tropical Hyperborea” coming from.

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russia-burning-not-apocalypse-but-prelude/

    The extent to which Russia benefits from global warming surely ought to be reassessed. Most climate models predicted a moderate increase in agricultural output on the cold Eurasian steppes with up to 2C of warming, making up for declining yields in the mid-latitudes and tropics. These assumptions might have to be reassessed if Russia’s Black Earth metamorphoses into a Dust Bowl. Though mass migration to the Arctic is a possible (and probably inevitable in the long-term) adaptation, it needs generations to be effected.

    The preparations have to begin now. The sooner Putin and Medvedev realize this, the more favorably history will judge them; minor things will be forgotten. (I intend to write a post on Russia’s future as an Arctic civilization sometime in the next few weeks).

    Russia is unlikely to ever have problems feeding itself, as long as its agricultural policies remain more or less sane. Nonetheless, its massive drought (which may become the norm rather than the exception sooner rather later) and grain export ban indicate it’s unwise to rely on it to bring big food surpluses to the global dinner table in the next few decades.

  26. Europe Europa says

    Its overall vastly less irritating than Anglo efforts to completely wipe out the entire culture in their regions to replace it with a “colonial culture” while hypocritically claiming that it is a form of improvement.

    Nonsense, India has no Anglo culture what so ever and “Anglo” culture in Hong Kong amounts to some British and American financial institutions being based there and a lot of Hong Kongers having a pseudo-English first name, most Hong Kongers can’t even speak English.

    If the aim of British colonialism was to force British culture on the peoples they colonised then I’d say the colonialists were remarkably poor at it, compared to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in Latin America where almost no trace of the native languages and cultures remains, they’re all “Latinos” now. Russia has been far more effective at wiping out indigenous languages and cultures and replacing it with Russian language and culture as well.

  27. Anonymous lurker says

    The sooner those contrived, remote Arctic “mono”-cities disappear, the better. Many of them are far too large for their own good as it is, and the thawing permafrost and all the issue it causes will make continuing repairs of all those buildings economically unfeasible eventually, so most people will have to leave and the essential workforce that operate the industries (that led to those cities being built in the first place) can all move into mobile barracks instead, and spend month-long shifts there, returning to new homes in better areas when they’re off duty. That’s how they do it in Yamal and so on, resource extraction industries that were built post-USSR.

    In other words, rather follow the Canadian model. The USSR really messed all that up, and modern Russia now has to deal with the fallout of those policies.

    Then, as things keep getting hotter, utilize the lands for livestock pastures and forestry, but keep urban development at a minimum since it’s only going to be a pain in the ass.

  28. anonymous coward says

    > A hot day is literally proof of Global Warming (c) and that sky is gonna fall any day now.
    > A cold day is just weather, what are you, some sort of Science Denier?

    Okay now. Back to work, talking to NPC’s isn’t so much fun after all.

  29. anonymous coward says

    The sooner those contrived, remote Arctic “mono”-cities disappear, the better.

    Many of them are older than America itself.

    Not gonna happen, it’s a source of national pride. Might as well ask Americans to abandon Arizona on account of it being, like, too hot and dry.

  30. anonymous coward says
  31. Philip Owen says

    On appointment, Xi made pointed remarks about unequal treaties. Hong Kong was already Chinese. Only Russia was left. China is not Russia’s friend.

  32. Philip Owen says

    Siberia has a continental climate but not many thermometers to record it.

    Florida has a maritime climate.

  33. Philip Owen says

    Right. Britain traded. Russia was a straight tribute extracting Empire. No country’s historians ever admit to attacking first, even Custer was responding to Sioux attacks. Was Ermakov under threat?

  34. Blinky Bill says

    You can hear the hatred in Xi’s voice when he speaks about Russians in this video. It’s shocking, a must watch for any Russian. Don’t let the Chinese fool you.

    https://youtu.be/ElJMsIsB3cU

  35. Blinky Bill says

    Long live Welsh Chinese Friendship !

    https://youtu.be/bttS3ebwN_g

  36. India has no Anglo culture what so ever

    English is an official language in India you fool

  37. Do you really want a state where the BLM/woke ideology rule to be a player?

    Consider this from above: There’s a good chance that 2020, an already very powerful year, will also become the hottest year on record (PredictIt now puts it at 50/50)..

    Those with the most melanin could have a big advantage as the temperature rises in the North. White skin will be a handicap as the planet heats up.

  38. Europe Europa says

    Those are minority languages on the verge of extinction, the main language in every Latin American country is Spanish or Portuguese (in Brazil).

    If Britain had been as successful in India, the main language there would be English and Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages would be minority tribal languages on the verge of extinction.

  39. Doesn’t that mean more mosquitoes?

    There are clouds of mosquitoes in Siberia now. With warming, mosquitoes will become less (in dry steppes, they will disappear completely)

  40. This so-called “hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic” has elicited an article by Anthony Watts at his award-winning WUWT science blog: Climate Change? Temperature Hits 100 Degrees Above Arctic Circle, Just Like 100 Years Ago

    In the comments, I found remarks claiming the high temperature in Verkoyansk on June 21, 2020 was only 97 degrees F, but the Time & Date website shows that the high was just 93° F:

    https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/verkhoyansk/historic

    Another source, Average Weather in January in Verkhoyansk, Russia, includes the section “Data Sources”, where I found this notation:

    Verkhoyansk is further than 200 kilometers from the nearest reliable weather station

    https://weatherspark.com/m/143301/1/Average-Weather-in-January-in-Verkhoyansk-Russia

    So, how hot was it really on June 21, 2020 in Verkhoyansk, Russia?

    The plain answer is “nobody knows.”

    Никто не знает.

  41. It is Ermak (BTW it is not a family name, but a Turk moniker).

    At the time of Ivan the Terrible the Cossacks (a Turk ethnonym) were highly bilingual in Old Russian and Turkish dialects.

    Ermak’s expedition was part to the ongoing fight between Rus/Muscovy polities and the Great Steppe nomads that have lasted some 500 years before definitely turning to Slav advantage.

    OTOH the expeditions of Dezhnev and his Cossacks were pure colonial exploration similar to what was happening in America at the time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dezhnev

  42. Europe Europa says

    Hong Kong was also just a set of minor fishing villages as well, the city today was built by the British but no one disputes that it belongs to China (or Hong Kongers themselves). I don’t see how the situation is any different to Vladivostok really.

    Also, give me an example of the so called “genocides” that Britain has committed? Most of the claimed ones are nonsense like Irish and the Bengal famines which were basically crop failures and arguably poor management of the situation than actual genocides. Plenty of Ukrainians would say the Holodomor was a genocide, as well as things like Circassian genocide. A Russian (or Russian lackey) saying Britain “sets the standard” for genocide is rich.

  43. another anon says

    It is not only Siberia. This year, Atlantic is going to be wild.
    Say hello to Dolly!

    https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/1275464143097573378

    Good that world’s greatest scientist knows that global warming is hoax.
    Otherwise, we should be really worried.

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385

  44. This is more than a little muddled. The 100.4° F high temperature record in Verkhoyansk was set on June 20th, not the 21st.

    For June 20, 2020, the Time & Date website records 95° at 12 pm, and 97° at 6 pm in Verkhoyansk, but the website notes: “Actual official high and low records may vary slightly from our data, if they occured in-between our weather recording intervals..”

    The warmest part of the day may be around 3 – 4 pm, so the Time & Date temperatures are consistent with the high temperature reaching 100.4° F in Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020, at least on somebody’s thermometer.

    Whether or not this record becomes official remains to be seen.

  45. Philip Owen says

    My landlady’s family name is Ermakova. It comes out Ermakov without thinking.