Talk:2021 Western North America heat wave

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Sources[edit]

---Another Believer (Talk) 01:12, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Orla McCaffrey (June 27, 2021). "Record-Setting Heat Wave Engulfs Pacific Northwest". The Wall Street Journal.
Voice of America has some additional sources:

Di (they-them) (talk) 18:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Impact in PDX[edit]

---Another Believer (Talk) 18:28, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another source for records set[edit]

A Running List of All-Time Heat Records Broken in Pacific Northwest, Western Canada by the Weather Channel. Schazjmd (talk) 00:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Melted wires on Trimet?[edit]

Local news, and TriMet releases, describe wire sagging, and show a boringly routine example of overload damage. It’s only when you get long distance, or sink to sources like HuffPo, that sources describe melted copper or aluminum.

(This, BTW, is the third time I’ve added a new section here. In compensation, I suppose, two extra copies of a new section on a different article popped up. Go figure.) Qwirkle (talk) 16:17, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I had noticed that. Please use accurate language. Liquefaction is not the same as thermal expansion or conductivity decreasing with temperature. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:47, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
changed to "sagged" Chidgk1 (talk) 18:33, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the image accompanying this BBC article, they look to me like they might be melted. At least the insulation something is damaged. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:20, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Corrected myself, looked closer and that looks like a copper conductor that contacted the bolt and created a short circuit arc. It could indeed have been a sagging conductor (not wire necessarily). ☆ Bri (talk) 19:22, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That failure mode helped the 2003 blackout (conductor(s) drooped till a tree or something could complete a short circuit). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:53, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Well I'm going to search for sources that say something like "sagged, shorted [or arced] and melted [or vaporized]" which I bet is the actual sequence of events. Popular press usually doesn't go that deep into details, though. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably the industry press does. kencf0618 (talk) 15:43, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the problem…or at least the problem that I see, is that the heat didn’t melt any wires, overload may have melted part of one little bit of wire…but it is just as conceivable that wire got plasmafied, oxidized into powder, etc, etc, ad naus. It’s yer basic short, and, in this case, that has little to do with heat sag.Qwirkle (talk) 23:21, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Section too technical ?!?[edit]

Hello everyone. I do not agree with the statement that the section is too technical because the facts look counter intuitive. These facts need to be explained. That Seattle gets a temperature exceeding 40°C looks hard to believe. Looking at the METARs this morning and yesterday, I saw that the temperature was around 15°C with a dew point of 14°C and a marine breeze. So, the human body can easily recover. The explanation of the trouble are the downslope winds (similar to the Santa Ana wind) where the air heats up at 1K/100 metres. This phenomenon can be very sudden and when the East wind triggers, then here we go. With this paragraph, I now understand the gibberish given by the media that looks, at face value, absurd. In France, a similar phenomenon occurred in June 2019 where a fake Mistral (that is supposedly cold) was blowing and triggering a temperature of 46°C with a downslope wind. So, this information is critical and the banner ought to be removed. Another opinion? Thanks. Malosse (talk) 18:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Guardian gave an excellent explanation. And it is scary! Here is the link: [1]. Malosse (talk) 19:19, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Washington gets Chinook winds regularly, but this was another level entirely. Also in the reverse direction from usual so Western Washington had these unusually high temperatures, not just the interior. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:26, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since Chinooks are common this makes Lytton breaking it's heat record (from 1941) by almost the record for margin of record breaking (10.4°F, Montpelier, France 1946-2019) absurd. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to rewrite the section. Give me some time and let me know if it is any better. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bri, Malosse, Qono, and Sagittarian Milky Way: Is it any better now? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:00, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion completely misses the catabatic wind effect (1K/100 metres heating) and the overheating of the plateaus due to the lack of snow. If the plateaus get warm and the synoptic wind being East, then we get these crazy temperatures on the coast. It is not a fœhn effect (or chinook), but a Santa Ana wind effect or summer Mistral effect in France: no precipitation occurs on the upwind side of the mountains. Moreover, it would be good to mention the height of the 500 hPa level: this will establish the existence of a heat dome and a Santa Ana wind effect due to the high temperatures over the plateaus. Please note that dp/dz = -ρ g and when the air is hot ρ becomes smaller and thus the 500 hPa level gets higher. The FAA says, cold, look below: ρ becomes larger and the pressure altitude becomes overestimated. Malosse (talk) 23:28, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is, I don't see where I have determined it to be a fœhn, chinook or a Santa Ana wind effect. Moreover, what you say makes sense, but I have found it nowhere in sources yet mentioned - if anything, this one compares it to chinooks and not Santa Ana winds. If you have a source saying about Santa Ana effects (which are, in fact, normally seen only in SoCal, while chinooks are typical of the Pacific Northwest, feel free to introduce it.
I will mention the height of the heat dome, as apparently it is also a record value there, and I'll mine for strictly environmental/climate websites, but I'm not sure I'll find a lot yet. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:49, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The source 19 is incorrect and not reliable. In a high pressure area, the air goes down at a few centimetres per second. The explanation about the air trapped is gibberish or at best very vague. It could be an orographic effect: I buy it. Malosse (talk) 23:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The source 19 is incorrect and not reliable. In a high pressure area, the air goes down at a few centimetres per second You basically try to argue it's not a heat dome. But again, "a few cm per second", if you multiply it to get an hour or two, suddenly grows to a couple hundred, or thousand meters). Besides, source 19 is what, the Clifford F. Mass blog, right? But he's a subject matter expert. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:54, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The concept of heat dome is too vague. What I am only saying is that a catabatic wind going down from 2 km to 0 will heat the air by 20 K. Thus, if the temperature over the plateau at 2 km high is 25°C, the air on the coast will be at 25+20=45°C. This crazy heat wave is a byproduct of this catabatic wind. The Guardian has said with the snow gone, the basins will heat up faster and thus they will be the causation of the crazy temperatures generated by these downslope winds. A dire warning about the effects of global warming! The concept of an Omega block is sensible and this generates a heat wave. The 500 hPa level being at 600 dam, is it a cause or a consequence of the heat wave? The best is to wait for scientific papers on the topic and avoid listening to journalists that are half competent. Please note that I am a French speaking contributor and there has been a specific page about the fœhn effect to which I contributed,[2]. The fœhn as the chinook involve some precipitation on the upwind side. The Santa Ana wind is dry all the way down. In Southern California, it generates summer hot weather in November with snow in the mountains! So, in the latter case, the release of latent heat caused by the condensation does not come into play. The physics is different. Mon opinion à 2 centimes d'euro. Malosse (talk) 03:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It all sounds sensible, but we cannot make original research here. I agree that the popular press is often not the best source for scientific info, but it seems that the scientists themselves have generally agreed with the notion that it is because of the heat dome. The only problem is, introducing more references to Twitter will make matters worse - we already are overrelying on the citations from the social media (even if these come from subject-matter experts), and while these are actually the only ones we have, they will have to be replaced as soon as the data appears in actual RS. From what I see, the journalists are not misreporting consensus of scientists, so I'm fine relying on these sources for the moment being. When peer-reviewed journals start to analyse that extreme, we'll add these sources and if they say that the reason is a "katabatic wind", we'll add that.
Btw still, no one has still actually mentioned precipitation at all in the article (or, if anything, it was mention in the context of its lack or drought). You are free to change the text if you believe it to be wrong or misleading.
The inference you make from the Guardian report could be placed into the "Impacts" section as a SME expert (or maybe create a new "reactions" section).
The 500 hPa level being at 600 dam, is it a cause or a consequence of the heat wave? In a way, both, as IMHO it seemed to be a self-reinforcing mechanism, at least at some point, but let's wait until someone actually says that. Btw, if you could find some news/data saying what was the peak pressure at 500 hPa, I'd be grateful. The best I found was 5986 gpm, but again, only on Twitter. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 03:54, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me! Thanks for the rewrite. Qono (talk) 05:32, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Count dead carefully[edit]

I just removed 233 BC dead. That's counting every coroner case in those days, not just heat-related. I get this is the new crisis, and overhyping is tempting, but heart disease, opioids, COVID, suicide and car crashes are still deadly, too, among other usual suspects. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:58, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that the annual deaths of British Columbia are about 38,000. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:07, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds true enough, but the annual average (probably including unreferred hospital deaths) is irrelevant to these four days, isn't it? InedibleHulk (talk) 20:17, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So the number to subtract from raw deaths per day (where does BC post that?) is about 100. Maybe deaths in past Junes are on the Internet somewhere which would be more accurate as places usually have months are which are consistently more deathy than others. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The average four-day number of deaths needing the coroner, as she gave the news, is 130 (so 32ish daily). Subtract that from whatever to find "excess". If there's a late June average, I haven't seen it, but as a general rule, hotter and colder periods are deadlier everywhere. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
One last factoid to consider before reading too far into causes of excess sudden death, three people died heat-related deaths in Greater Vancouver and in BC over the previous five years. Not a hundred and three or three-twenty-one, just three. If it sounds too "unprecedented" to be true, it still is. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's bullshit, excess deaths is more believable than official causes of death on death certificates, these things usually cause deaths, in Europe it's been up to 70,000 from 1 heat wave but they have up to ~0.75 billion affected, instead of ~18 million, and length and lack of breaks like Portland maybe elsewhere had from nighttime sea breezes can greatly enhance death toll. Probably most of those excess dead weren't going to live far after the heat wave if the weather had been normal anyway, as the frail are most likely to die, but predicting what day someone will die of old age if nothing bad happens to them, requires a psychic. And that is why excess deaths is much more believable than insisting the death certificates literally say heatstroke or similar, not even heart attack (which no one can ever be sure wouldn't have happened anyway, even if the dude was young, fit and exercising in the sun when he fell, the only way to include these would be to count excess deaths). Of course how much the total PNW deaths varies among other June 25-29ths starting on Friday should be looked at (these happen once every 7 years on average), but the NYC deaths on date of the year so and so (also about 100/day) don't vary so much from year to year that an extra few dekapercent isn't statistically significant. But you probably can't really say much more from the excess deaths than "at least an extra hundred would've lived at least a few days longer, but as you don't age much in a year or 3 and 120°F is a significant stressor when you're old and British Columbian some might've survived years" Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:11, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What's bullshit is this idea that the headline writers and social media influencers they snag somehow have equally valid opinions on what causes death. From Wuhan to Minneapolis to Washington, it's crazy how little certified death matters. I trust pathologists, always have, sometimes psychics, never topical news, especially during it. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:38, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If some headline writers wrote nonsense like putting the total coroners number for excess that doesn't change the fact that excess deaths is the best estimator of well, excess deaths. If the death certificate says something like "unknown" or "myocardial infarction" or "pneumonia" or something like that no one is psychic enough to know if that individual would've died anyway if the weather was average. What if some tough young athlete gets a heart attack while trying to not be cut from the team or something in the heat (as has happened in the US South), if the weather was average would he have just pushed himself harder and so collapsed anyway? Did he (as is often the case in these incidents) have some rare undiagnosed pathology that made him easily killed like some pacemaker need which probably needs a heavy exercise EKG while nerves are signaled by a brain that's still animated to diagnose? Who the fuck knows. But lo and behold, statistics very nicely says how many should've died anyway without saying who cause how many die on June 25ths-28ths varies less than many people think once the deaths gets up to ~100+ (barring some large disaster which doesn't happen very often and is of obvious cause like the hugely above normal death for 9/11 and 500+% deaths/day for COVID and small additional rise for a flu season or 2 which are the only NYC death bumps that aren't the moderate, monotonous winter and summer ones and spring and fall valleylets which straddle ~140 deaths/day for NYC in a long time, I've seen the NY Times graph of city deaths), if deaths were so unpredictable actuaries couldn't offer to give 19-year olds many, many thousands of US dollars if they die in their 20s for peanuts of insurance premiums. When 130 people are supposed to die and 233 do instead, then even if no one that might've been heat death didn't go to the coroner that's still about many dozens who would've lived at least like a day but maybe over a year plus maybe a smattering of infants trapped in cars or non-frail badasses overexerting. Or badasses thinking things like "wow I'm getting thirstier faster than I thought, I could go back for a water bottle or something but don't want to do all that extra walking, I'll power though the thirst instead like a boss and drink near destination" then he almost makes it into town but collapses from not being able to sweat anymore and falls on or tumbles down to a place where no one notices him in time. By now it's not even 100 excess anymore anyway, your coroner is now saying 321 excess sudden deaths, and American deaths are increasing too. Not sure what you gain if the hundreds of deaths (none frail and/or catching it-prone enough that COVID killed first) are 3 instead but whatever. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:39, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicate subsection heading titles[edit]

I know common sense and practicality are important, but MOS:HEAD says "Section headings should: Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place..." Should we retitle any of the subsection headings to avoid duplication (Idaho, Oregon, Washington, etc)? ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The links are working correctly (because MOS:HEAD asks to make unique identifiers so that MediaWiki engine works properly, which it does even with duplicate names), so there's no problem so far and it's not urgent. It would be desirable to change the titles, I agree, but I've no idea how to do that, and the info is easier sorted by provinces/states for now, which is something we IMHO should be doing now, as the event is not over yet. When we have all the information assembled, it would probably make sense to make a thematical rather than geographical arrangement of the impacts of the heat wave. Maybe we should do it in a day or two, when the heat wave is expected to dissipate over Hudson Bay. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Meteorological History Rewrite[edit]

Would someone with more content expertise please rewrite the meteorlogical history section? It's hard to follow and could be improved. - ILBobby (talk) 15:15, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, and have a small improvement to offer[edit]

ILBobby has a point. The section now mentions a Rex block, which redirects to Block (meteorology). The link might be more useful if it redirected to the specific section within the article on Block (meteorology), rather than the whole article. The existing section "Meteorological History" is so complicated that I won't fix this myself, at least not now. Oaklandguy (talk) 21:10, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

First paragraph is Americentric[edit]

"An extreme heat wave is affecting much of the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. In particular, it struck northern California, Idaho, western Nevada, Oregon, and Washington in the United States, as well as British Columbia, and, in its later phase, Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, and Yukon, all in Canada." Can someone with more editing experience fix this? The heat dome is centered over the BC Interior, so British Columbia should be first. California should certainly not be the first - BC, Washington, Oregon and Alberta are the most directly affected areas. 24.67.173.10 (talk) 22:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Someone probably wanted alphabetical to avoid arguments about exact placement but it should go in some more logical order like severity or approximate chronological. Is there really a reason to split by country as in both of those orders it switches between province and state often. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If we are trying to have a more logical order, or more generally, a better order, I think we should pay attention not only to alphabetical order, order of severity, and/or chronological order, but also position on the map, by which I mean an order conducive to the reader easily finding the areas (e.g. parts of states of the US and provinces of Canada) on the accompanying map, or on a conceptual approximate "map" in the mind's eye of the reader. If the reader has located on the map or recalled, for example, Northern California, it is easier for the reader to then do the same with an adjacent region, especially if the reader has prior knowledge that it is adjacent. Thus, in this case, it is easier to next read that Oregon was also affected, and then that Washington was, and then that Idaho was, and then that Western Nevada was, because Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada form an unbroken chain of areas which makes it easy to mentally move from one to the next in the mind's eye. It is not as easy on the mind's eye of the reader to read that Northern California was affected, and then to read that Idaho was, and then to read that Oregon was, because Idaho does not border on California. Arctic Gazelle (talk) 19:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly, the correct name begins “2021 Cascadia….” Qwirkle (talk) 23:38, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It goes in an approximately chronological order; later sorted alphabetically. At first, it struck NW US and BC, so I sorted the US states affected (alphabetically) and then mentioned BC, because it would be easier to formulate it with the provinces affected later. After some time, it went east, and I sorted in an alphabetical order all provinces/territories that were affected since 29/30 June, as that was the time records began to be shattered. You can change it to a strictly severity order, but we have at least 3 July. Who knows, maybe Manitoba and Saskatchewan will see something more; apparently some NW Ontario communities are also going to be affected + it will be hard to determine if Oregon or Washington were worse affected, because Washington was arguably warmer and closer to the centre but Oregon had more deaths.
The fact that BC was struck worst even appears in the lead (destruction of Lytton, almost 500 deaths in BC compared to a couple dozen elsewhere), so personally I don't find the change necessary.
@Qwirkle: where does "2021 Cascadia..." appear? It says "W North America", which is the case because all-time records were beaten from Oregon and all the way to Manitoba. Certainly the latter is not in Cascadia. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On a similar note, I noticed someone decided that we should be using US English in this article, I guess because that was what was first used in the article. But if we decide that this is more of a Canadian event than a US event, we should be changing that as well? -- Earl Andrew - talk 05:27, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to do that for consistency (not because it was first used, as I actually prefer BrEng most, and CanEng is closer to the British version than AmEng). We don't want miles kilometers to appear in the US section and kilometres in the Canadian one in one article, unless we split them in two, which I see no reason to do; besides, AmEng is a more widely known variety than CanEng, and, since that's an event reported all around the world and potentially there are editors from other parts of the world (I, for instance, constantly run into these annoying GDPR geoblocks, which Canadian media thankfully don't have as many as south of the border), I thought it would be more user-friendly for editors to use the variety known, at least for the time the interest in the article is large.
But if we decide that this is more of a Canadian event than a US event, we should be changing that as well? If consensus decides to use CanEng, so be it, but please be consistent and use it throughout. For now, it seems the heat will be in the news today and probably tomorrow, and I expect the traffic to still be rather large, but after that, most of the edits will be about adding economic/environmental consequences (wildfires, agriculture losses) or maintenance/rewriting, and then it will make no difference whatsoever, and even less for me. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 07:52, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand we have to be consistent throughout the article, but does that not apply to temperatures as well? The Canadian sections have Celsius first, and the US has Fahrenheit first. -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:19, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
True to the extent that it would be desirable to be uniform, but there's a problem, because Canada does not use Fahrenheit at all and the US does not use centigrade for that purpose; moreover, the conversion of values would be problematic in the US section, because public records in the US give whole Fahrenheit values only, and since deg. C~9/5 deg. F, we'd often see the whole values in centigrade correspond to two whole values in Fahrenheit. How are we going to write Celsius values then without distorting the records Besides, AmE does not mandate that we use Fahrenheit, it's just that the Americans don't think metric. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Missing article: 2021 Western United States wildfire season[edit]

I think, there should be an article 2021 Western United States wildfire season like 2020 Western United States wildfire season. Maybe even including western Canada, which is also battered by wildfires following the heat wave. Till now it seems there's only the 2021 California wildfires article, which is insufficient to capture the whole fires burning in the west. I think there should be some central article, which describes the whole situation and circumstances, so articles with regional/state focus can do the rest. But it's always unfortunate, if you have to search in several articles without having a joint overarching article. This article here cannot provide that function, as this heat wave will eventually end, but the wildfire season will continue and very likely escalate quickly. Opinions? Andol (talk) 00:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Andol, 2021 Oregon wildfires and 2021 Washington wildfires exist as well. ---Another Believer (Talk) 02:07, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Ok, that's a start, but still no overarching article. And also no article about the wildfires in Canada. Andol (talk) 14:10, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Andol, Sure. Maybe start by expanding 2021 wildfire season? ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:23, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that could be an idea. That's an article I didn't notice until now. Thank you! Andol (talk) 15:48, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I heartily agree that there should be an omnibus article. I began National Interagency Fire Center, after all. kencf0618 (talk) 17:24, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Catastrophic climate destabilization -- still debatable. It's just a little hot weather. Excuse me while I gas up my Chevy Suburban...[edit]

Now that I've got your attention, bravo, wikipedia, for not mentioning climate change or global heating until nine paragraphs into this entry. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. It's nice to see that the always-credible wikipedia takes the easily bruised sensibilities of the pro-human extinction set into account. 209.34.140.68 (talk) 14:37, 3 July 2021 (UTC) Charlie Coke 209.34.140.68 (talk) 14:37, 3 July 2021 (UTC) 209.34.140.68 (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC) 209.34.140.68 (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Based on this first rapid analysis, we cannot say whether this was a so-called “freak” event (with a return time on the order of 1 in 1000 years or more) that largely occurred by chance, or whether our changing climate altered conditions conducive to heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest, which would imply that “bad luck” played a smaller role and this type of event would be more frequent in our current climate."

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/ Personally, I am pleased that sometimes a meteorological event is treated as meteorology first and even climatologists of the WWA confirm that the degree of climate change is not clear : important or less important. Science is patience and not emotion. We will see the results of more detailed studies.2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:CE23:4FAC:640E:31BA (talk) 12:50, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to link to it too, because of their climate-change free "Background information". Still as Main findings it's all over again a repeat on a 1 to 150,000 chances of occuring. --Askedonty (talk) 13:32, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anon, the scientific bias is quite clear. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/ The citation you gave admits it's short of a slam dunk because of the lack of data which was not present. It is now present, has no doubt been plugged into the model, and we have silence. While we do always look for refinements in scientific findings, a consensus has formed in secondary sources based on this preliminary work, and it is Reuters who says it most succinctly: this event is virtually impossible without climate change. ClaudeReigns (talk) 12:23, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The scientific bias? You mean that my WWA reference is a bias? You mean that Scientific American is more educated than the WWA? I think that, as many, you are so proselytic about climate change that you do not want anymore hear about the complexity of things. If you pay attention to a single event, as is the idea of writing something for every weather event, you will face the complexity of things by definition. The climate understanding is when you average out many events, which supposes that you would have an article on many weather events and not a single one. It would be far better in fact to leave out climate change for a 1-event article because it does not fit the scientifical method by definition. We do not need extreme events to understand climate change by the way, extreme events are a tricky world that does not suit well to the climate change. The increase in frequency of moderate events is far more suitable to the climate change analysis.

Global warming / anthropogenic climate change[edit]

Cliff Mass stated categorically that this event is not evidence of anthropogenic climate change [3]. We should probably evaluate and discuss other academic viewpoints. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:55, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well a ~1 to 3 millennium heat wave (if climate hadn't changed) should happen somewhere roughly once every 1 to 3 millennia*fraction of Earth's square degrees that got 1 to 3 millennia temps, so happening once is not really evidence, but it's happened multiple times in a short time (i.e. parts of Europe 2019 were once in millennium(s) too) and each new ~1 to 3 millennium heatwave will just bring it asymptotically closer to proof from past weather statistics alone and not just something predicted to happen by scientific consensus. It's pointless and counterproductive to nitpick when the climate models got good enough to be sure the probable outcome is very bad a long time ago and it's at least mostly man (in fact it should be cooling very slowly, Milankovitch cycles). And at any rate it is philosophically bad to keep burning so much shit when the rain is already a pH of 5.6 before the burning and the CO2 has increased double digits percent (about 1.5 times normal to be precise) and coal, oil and gas are collectively the main cause.These things lag the carbon pollution and accelerate in a positive feedback, only leveling off from the thermal radiation reaching ((new Kelvins (293 to 298)) divided by old Kelvins (288))4. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:47, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, rather the other way round - that this event was not caused of anthropogenic climate change, as Clifford Mass does not say it has had no influence at all.
Essentially he argued that it was a result of natural variability, that climate change added just +1-2 degrees, not more, and addressed some issues which actually are not mentioned in the article (such as apparently dry conditions intensifying pressure); This seems to be contradicted by the charts in The Economist, but he talks about Oregon and Washington, so that might not apply in this particular case. Besides, he is known to be frequently reacting against what he perceives as exaggeration of climate change effects by media, often as a lone dissenter. Whether he overreacted is yet unknown, not at least until we get scholarly research, which isn't going to happen soon. So far he's the alone in that voice as far as my Google search goes, so we might give him some weight to the article, but the predominant narrative among researchers (quoted by media) stays rather clear for now, and by WP:PROPORTION we can give him a couple words for now, unless more agree. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:59, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(I have not listened to that podcast so don't know what it says) That is not how climatology works, in addition to the average temperature of that area having risen 1-2 degrees there's other effects like the jet stream meandering more which makes the 90th, 99th etc percentile temperatures more than 1 to 2 degrees hotter. And every time it funnels cold to them in winter idiots cry "where's your global warming now?". There's papers on this, secular variance increase is basic stuff. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And the more woker than thous have lost grip with reality on some things, maybe 1 or 2 orders of magnitude less severe than the more baseder than thous (even more for the QAnons) but that is a side effect of polarization and left and right becoming sports fandoms and doesn't have anything to do with computer models (at least the more woker than thous can't hurt humanity by cutting emissions too fast. Given how long it took so long to start Kyoto and Paris treaties that isn't a realistic worry) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:06, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Though most of those wich are doing researche in the climate field are sure that extreme events like this heat wave would be not happend without human impact. [4]. And there is never 100% in sience, because that is the nature of sience itself. So why giving one person more impact than a hole science community?--195.65.23.196 (talk) 15:13, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a personal note[edit]

Our central air failed Saturday evening of this heat wave. Sunday morning my wife called around for repairs, only to learn the earliest a repairman could reach us would be 15 July, over 2 weeks later! (Local tv news had reported AC repairmen had backlogs of at least 2 weeks since the beginning of June.) I was forced to go looking for a portable air conditioner. (I won't mention the price; I was glad enough I could find one.) The family spent that night sleeping in the room where the AC was, & was glad when the weather broke. (Note: I mention this only to encourage searches for similar but attested stories about this unprecedented event.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:35, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As long as people have access to water to dampen a washcloth or towel and an electric fan, there is no crisis. Moreover, this heat wave wasn't "unprecedented", the breathless hype of this Wikipedia article notwithstanding. — 47.35.51.208 (talk) 18:37, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As long as people living out their twilight years alone have clogged arteries, damaged lungs, semifunctional kidneys, weak hearts, tired livers, sore joints, haywire nerves, atrophied muscles, poor eyesight, impaired agility, dulled reflexes, persistent psychoses and/or a generally limited range of motion, continually walking from the fan to the water to the fan again is never going to be as safe as it seemed in the good old days. Heck, even getting up and out of the wind is enough of a pressure drop and temperature shock for some Depression Era or post-war babies to drop everything they've been doing right there. It's definitely not unprecedented, mostly elderly people dying of a multitude of stressors, inside and out, but it's still a major localized crisis when you know or are one of the ones it happens every day to next. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:18, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's already in the everyday forever amount of non-excess deaths. You don't get to count those killed by a gust of wind persons twice. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorta. There is a big difference, though, between “died today; woulda died tomorrow” and “died today, woulda died in a year or two”. We can’t really address this well except in fairly long retrospect, though, so it doesn’t belong in the article yet. That does not mean it isn’t a real distinction. Qwirkle (talk) 15:25, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's also a big difference between getting killed by a gust of wind and getting killed by suddenly going from horizontal and pretty cool to vertical and too hot, as many times as it takes to keep ahead of the constantly warming towel, all due in part to the unusual weather. You're counting the former twice. I offered the latter once. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:37, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No double counting, the persons who would've died from moving from a horizontal to a vertical position in average weather are like 1 microsecond from death anyway and would be in the non-excess deaths, the persons who would've lived till at least the end of the death spike in average weather and only died cause it was also ~100-121.3° Fahrenheit are in the excess deaths. Plus or minus I dunno, a hundred? I wonder what would happen if you forced a multidisciplinary committee of deathologists to learn as much as they could about about the health of each Washingtonian, Oregonian and British Columbian who during the death spike then forced them to rank each death from most likely to be heat-related to least (i.e. a car crash or rapper who died snorting lines of drugs off a naked stripper would be low) then make them bet when each one of the x most likely to be heat-related would've died if the weather during the heat dome had been average where x is the excess deaths, thus getting an estimated average days or years lost per excess death. I bet it'd be about a year (maybe more if enough non-old lost many decades each while working or homelessing or whatever) but who knows. (I don't know about Canada but in the US if someone's willing to hitchhike or travel to make their homelessness easier they end up on a Pacific beach or one of the West Coast metro areas, as living outdoors forever is less likely to kill them there than anywhere else in the country. With Seattle obviously getting more homeless who'd rather trade rain and occasional not quite liquid rain for mild summers and Southern California getting more who fucking hate rain and cold) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:16, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Excess death is purely a statistical thing, only applicable to sets of numbers. Any individual death can't be classified this way, no matter the cause, manner, age, time or whatever else. If the daily sudden death average is 30, and one day all 30 died of heat-related causes, that'd be normal. If 90 died, 30 from heat, 30 from embolisms and 30 from a plane crash, you'd have 60 excess, but no way of knowing how many from each of those three groups make up that 60. You could pick 60, if you wanted, but it'd be arbitrary. Pros can tell if a given death was sudden, and if it was heat-related, but neither finding makes counting that one as excess or normal any more or less correct. I like rain, but hate wind, and once a stripper is naked, she stops being a stripper! InedibleHulk (talk) 07:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And as for that "microsecond", I think you underestimate the importance of blood pressure, whether working against the enlarged heart of a 69-year-old with hypertension or the crumbled capilliaries and collapsing veins of a 96-year-old with hypotension. Gravity and angular velocity deviations exist down here in the liquid realm, too, ya wacky space archer! OK, that was rude...but still, hemodynamics matter in bioplumbing, even the star Idaho quarterback's or the Hawaiian beach bum's. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:13, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You'd not be classifying individual deaths with this painstaking exercise (not even the car crashes, as you don't know if driving is increased or decreased by heat waves), merely getting a less uneducated guess for if 800 days of life lost of 2 millenniums is closer. Are there any plane crashes of 400 or even 30 people in the PNW? Those are not hard to find out about, every damn crash down to 30 people tops seems to get nominated for the front page it seems and none were in the Western Hemisphere. I had a relative who was normal weight his whole life, no preexisting conditions besides dizziness from standing like a young when he is not, he nearly blacked out from standing from a chair at barely 70 and survived standing up maybe over 100,000 more times, fell to the floor and had a bowel movement on himself before being discovered 1 to 1.5 later (3 days without food and drink killing the healthy is probably more of a desert thing, I've done 31 hours at the end of a 0 calorie week myself and could've easily done more, but he's old) spent most of a year in hospital and rehabilitative nursing home and finally succumbed at 85 to inhaling a bite of his like 2,000th supervised meal cause some idiot relative was supposed to supervise the whole not breathing food process but was paying attention to his own eating and cell phone. The dizziness thing gets worse over time and most people have self-preservation (or desire for a better suicide idea then "try to stand up real fast") and stand up within their limits by the time they've personally experienced momentary blindness or almost blindness and near-unconsciousness from standing up. If standing up as slowly as you can is the border of death one almost wonders how they survived this long. My relative was so weak his muscles shook like a powerlifter just to stand up during a muscularity test and he still didn't have blood pressure problems when standing up slow. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:08, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, slow and steady helps win the race to 100. Standing up, sitting down, ascending and descending stairs, driving, eating...if speed doesn't always kill, it certainly plays a part in a lot of sudden stops. Sorry about your family. Rather than go further off the rails guessing in circles about generic British Columbians, as interesting as it's been, I'm going to chill out, not exercise and chain smoke till the chief's done assessing the actual big picture. It's probably complex? One simple tip, though, adding excess deaths from Canada to heat-related deaths from America does not come to a total of excess deaths, same as six apples and three oranges doesn't make nine apples. Cheers to your health! InedibleHulk (talk) 09:30, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah I see, I had assumed US number was excess deaths too, and that their lowness must be cause we're already "pre-harvested" from our higher climatic continentality (at least Oregon population centers vs BC) and equatoriality while you only "pre-harvested" like 3 or something, having not read the sources. So real deaths might be a thousand plus. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:57, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Make no mistake, BC has been sickeningly humid before and overall Canadians are still hardier creatures per capita than Americans. This seemingly "unprecedented" and "urgent" spike is more due to underlying coronapolitical currents in the news, right under our noses. But yes, we should respect our elders and protect the land, honestly and shamelessly, no arguments there. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:51, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meh I think Vancouverites are moderately frailer than the valley where most Oregonians live when it comes to heat, you have less air conditioning, aren't inland, have cool seawater downtown, when you stop getting the normal prevailing wind or daytime sea breeze you're probably like fu'in 30 eh! This obviously doesn't apply to the part of Canada where most Canadians live, your heat waves aren't much cooler than Houston. And your winters are worse than us. And no this heat isn't precedented, it says right in the article that the heatwave was a thousand year event even in today's climate and has been made 150 times more likely (15,000%/15,000.00% in making sure the "right-brained"/bond investor get a full picture units) by the part of global warming that has happened already. I'm just glad the woker than thous who've never been even 1st world poor before are woke about something important for once (not that the Ouija board of influencers hasn't made other important things hip before, sometimes the woke get it right, heck sometimes even the based get it right, for brief Hawaiis of fuckin truth between endless Pacifics of bullshit) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vancouver is definitely spoiled and soft, by Canadian standards of living, that's why I went with "overall", selective statistics can prove everything. Maybe it has "come to this", a gentile gentrified generation afraid they'll melt if they go outside or stand alone, perhaps so afraid their trembling cooks their huddled mass from the inside, like those bees up in the True North, self-fulfilling their preoccupational prophecy panpsychically. I used to be woke, back before They changed what waking up was, now I'm just taking whatever money the government suddenly hands me and not seriously questioning as much about anything, eh? InedibleHulk (talk) 16:49, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I envy your ability to not be billed ridiculous dollars if you so much as sneeze near a medical thing. In New York City you're mailed a bill for thousands each time you need an ambulance. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I envy New York's ridiculous amount of cool new stuff to do. What good is saving money and staying alive when you're bored? I'd give my left kidney for even one classy joint within a reasonable distance! InedibleHulk (talk) 19:30, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A record high temperature is, by definition., “unprecedented”. Yeah, there is hype in some of the reporting; that does not change the underlying facts. Qwirkle (talk) 14:08, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New heat wave coming, perhaps new global record[edit]

CBS News is reporting that the Highest temperature recorded on Earth may be exceeded (with the caveat "reliably measured", meaning >129.9° F) in a new heat wave in the next few days. I wonder if this should be part of this article, or a new one? - Bri.public (talk) 16:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not this one, this one's in the past. The caveat was "if this threshold is crossed", like any potentially breakable record. Likewise, if another notable heat wave occurs, it'll likely get another article. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:45, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 10 July 2021[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. There is no commonly accepted term for the exact region which was affected by this heat wave. "Pacific Northwest" excludes areas which were hit especially hard, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan. "Western North America" includes areas which were not affected, such as western Mexico and American Southwest.

American sources tend to use "Pacific Northwest heat wave" in their coverage, but it's not clear whether they're using that term to refer to the heat wave as a whole or just the American regions affected by it. Sources from outside the United States describe the heat wave in other, broader terms (such as "Western US and Canada" or "Canada and the Pacific Northwest").

After four weeks of discussion, it appears unlikely that a consensus will be reached. This closure does not preclude future move requests, particularly in the event that a more precise title is suggested, or if a disambiguation from other Western North American heat waves becomes necessary. (non-admin closure) Surachit (talk) 09:10, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

2021 Western North America heat wave → 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave – The region affected was the Pacific Northwest. As previously mentioned on this talkpage, the current title is overly broad. "Pacific Northwest" is clearly used in sources: Washington Post, The New York Times, Associated Press. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:08, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Those are all American sources. The heatwave hit Canada as well (and worse too!), and while BC is often considered part of the PNW, the rest of Western Canada (which also got hit by the heatwave, with record temperatures) is not. I searched for BBC articles on the heat wave (a source with no links to either country) and only one article refers to the region being hit as the PNW. They usually just refer to the region as "Western US and Canada" or just "North America", or something along those lines.-- Earl Andrew - talk 03:35, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if the BBC is the best comparison - I'd assume more of their readers are from the UK and therefore somewhat less likely to know what "Pacific Northwest" refers to. this CBC source (the first one I found on Google) said both Canada and the Pacific Northwest - I still think "Pacific Northwest" is sufficient. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:01, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
CBC uses "Canada and the Pacific Northwest", and you got out of that the "Pacific Northwest" is sufficient? No, it's Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Two different places. By choosing one, you're being Americentric. If the BBC is avoiding the term because their readers may be less familiar with the term, then we should also avoid it for the same reason. Not all Wikipedia users are going to be familiar with US geography. -- Earl Andrew - talk 04:46, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do think it's sufficient as being better than the current title. I haven't seen many sources saying "Western North America", and "Canada and the Pacific Northwest" is also quite a bit longer (and less accurate). Elli (talk | contribs) 05:15, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support The current title is too ambiguous (WP:PRECISION). The current heat wave in the desert southwest, which has generated 130 degrees F in Death Valley, is going to be noteworthy on its own. @Earl Andrew: Neither of your suggestions address this problem.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:18, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Jasper Deng above, as well as the fact that most records mentioned were all from the northwest U.S, and Canada, so it seems reasonable. 🌀CycloneFootball71🏈 |sandbox 06:19, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose It was 104°F north of Alberta beating the previous heat record in the polar third of Earth's latitude degrees by 2.2 Fahrenheit. North of Alberta and 280 miles as the crow flies to NE BC but only 65 miles to Saskatchewan is not even close to Pacific Northwest. We're just going to have to start diambiguating these chronologically, maybe late June to early July 2021 Western North American heat wave and early to mid-July 2021 Western North American heat wave lol? Or if we're lucky it can be July 2021 Southwestern North American heat wave or July 2021 Western United States heat wave. The north bit of the mid-California valley at New York City latitude is supposed to get a near-desert-only 119 Fahrenheits and break their all-time record, is that still Southwest US just cause part of the same state extends south of the geographic center of the 48 states? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:26, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a small area that is just not neatly fitting in the "Southwest" definition but if you can approximately say that 90% is definitely SW US, I'd leave the "Southwest US". Besides, since the heat wave straddles two months, we could simply say "Early summer 2021 ..." or "Summer 2021 ..." if such need appears. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose There are a few problems with the name change.
    Sources presented. The WaPo source refers to an early forecast, when it was yet unknown whether the heat wave would cross the Rocky Mountains (it did). The NYT source describes a heat wave "over the Pacific Northwest", even though Alta. was definitely in heatwave conditions and I think no-one considers it as part of "Pacific Northwest" (I'm European, so correct me if I'm wrong). Moreover, it does not say "Pacific Northwest heat wave", it only describes the damage which occurred mostly in that region. Only AP explicitly refers to the term, but again the reporting focused on Wash. and Ore. and not on the heat wave in general, as it affected the area from NorCal and all the way to Man. I'm not aware of a news report that gets the full scope of the heat wave and then says it's a "Pacific Northwest heat wave".
    Geographic scope. All-time records were beaten/tied in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and NWT; a monthly record was additionally set in Montana, and daily records were set by remnants of the heat wave as far east as Labrador and as far southwest as SoCal (though most of it was concentrated in W North America). The name change ignores records (and consequences) in the Prairie provinces, California, Idaho, and Montana, which are covered rather well. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Pacific Northwest says it is British Columbia, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and sometimes Southeastern Alaska, Northern California, Western Montana and Yukon. But not Alberta. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose This heat wave affects an extraordinarily wide region. Death Valley is built for heat; the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia (Cascadia) are not. As of this writing a fire complex in Oregon is threatening a good chunk of the power supply for California, and Gov. Little has declared a state of emergency due to fires in the Idaho panhandle. "Western North America" is apt. kencf0618 (talk) 17:41, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Jasper Deng. The current title could be confused for the current heat wave going on in the Southwestern United States, which is also part of Western North America.  Bait30  Talk 2 me pls? 00:55, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's what hatnotes saying something like for the next Western wave see July 2021 Southwestern North America heatwave are for. You cannot say this is the Pacific Northwest heatwave when the zone of all-time province/state/Canadian territory records and all-time world latitude records extends to almost Saskatchewan (almost 2 provinces away from the Pacific Northwest broadly defined). The previous Northwest Territory record was also from this heatwave (like 400 miles away near Yukon) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Pacific Northwest is usually reserved for 3 subdivisions: WA, OR, and BC. Generally, some other areas are included like ID and norCal, but the first thing people think of is those three places. This heat wave went beyond the Pacific Northwest and if the article mentions records broken in California, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, etc., then it goes beyond PNW. There's also the relation to the current heat event affecting CA, NV, AZ, and UT, so keeping the title reflects how the effects are related. If the article is rearranged such that the main emphasis is effects in WA, OR, and BC (epicenter of the heat wave) while simply skimming through effects in other states, then I could support. Alternatively, split the article so that the effects across North America are documented, but have a separate article for the PNW.

Einsteinboricua (talk) 12:32, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Although impacts with the heatwave described in this article in particular did extend slightly into some other subregions, they were focused squarely in the regions usually referred to as Pacific Northwest (see the map in the infobox). If all else fails, there needs to be some sort of disambiguation between this event and at least two other heat waves that have affected the western United States this summer. Those occurred in mid-June and early July, and both were focused more on southwestern portions of the US (places like Death Valley, northern California, Vegas, Phoenix, SLC, Denver etc. The current name of this article implies that it was the only heat wave in any of western North America in summer 2021. Highway 89 (talk) 21:10, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about 2021 Northwest North America heatwave and July 2021 Southwest North America heatwave? Would be real nice if North America had a short name like Asia. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:30, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about 2021 North America summer heat wave to describe all the heat waves that North America has endured/is going to endure, as it starts to seem that the phrase "heat wave" is not bound to disappear from the newspapers at least until September :), and leave this article as is, as one of the main articles? I hope there aren't going to be any more phases as epic as this one, but I'd frankly not be surprised. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 01:52, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
2021 North American heat waves? Nothing notable before meteorological summer started in June 1.0? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The new name is more precise geographically. North America is large and the title could be understood that the heat wave affect the whole region including western Mexico, which it did not. Sgnpkd (talk) 19:04, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The new name is more precise geographically. From what I understand, the Monsoon is doing its job in Arizona and generates wet thunderstorms. I do not think that San Diego is affected by this heat wave. Malosse (talk) 04:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    We are not speaking of the heat wave that arrived around July 10.
    I do not think that San Diego is affected by this heat wave. SoCal sort of was, it's in the article. Though not specifically San Diego.
    To be clear, World Weather Attribution uses "Western North American" to describe the heat wave in general (interestingly, Inside Climate News, while discussing it, changes it to "Pacific Northwest", but I'd stick to the original) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:31, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per all above, especially the sentiments from user Einsteinboricua. Either we keep this article's name, or break it up into different ones to cover the other states apart from the Pacific Northwest that are also affected by the heatwave. GyozaDumpling (talk) 18:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose In fact we probably should rename it 2021 North American heatwave as, according to Axios, the heatwave is spreading across all of north america for this week.Elishop (talk) 21:48, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Elishop: the heatwave described in this article is not ongoing. This article is not meant to document every 2021 heatwave in North America. Elli (talk | contribs) 08:08, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, to me the Pacific Northwest is confined to the lush areas to the west of the Cascade Range, which might be wrong, but I am surely not alone. Abductive (reasoning) 18:09, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neither support nor oppose @Elli: The reason this page was named 2021 Western North America heat wave is because this heat wave affected parts of California as well. Lot of places in the Central Valley as well as Southern California also got hot temperatures during this time. In fact, the hot temperatures these regions experienced is mentioned in some parts of this page. However, if you believe that the California temperatures were too insignificant to be included in the title, then you can choose to name this page 2021 Pacific Northwest and Canada heat wave or 2021 Pacific Northwest and Western Canada heat wave as these were the regions most impacted by the high temperatures. Thanks, EagerBeaverPJ (talk) 03:30, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Scale analysis error[edit]

"In this situation, a high-pressure area stays in place for a long time and does not let cyclones pass through it, which could have cooled the region." It makes sense only if the high pressure signal was multi-week scale (as in NOAA's definition), so that it can impact the synoptic scale. But in this case, the high pressure signal was synoptic-scale. If you have a synoptic-scale high, it does mean that you do not have a synoptic-scale low... for sure! The Canadian Rockies case was for the most synoptic scale: a very potent anomaly moving quickly to the continent and then slowing down for a few days but finally moving east. I am not even sure it was stationary long enough to be called a block. Even if the anomaly remained only a few days, the ground reacted quickly, so that the ground event was as long as the upper-level event: a few days.

Is this a block? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Temperature in Lytton[1]
I'm pretty certain that the reference to a Rex Block scale or not is correct. It's that "signals" jargon by contrast that's making me uneasy. --Askedonty (talk) 18:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Daily Data Report for June 2021". Government of Canada.
I am sorry for the complexity of my text. When NOAA say that "a high-pressure area stays in place for a long time and does not let cyclones pass through it, which could have cooled the region" they underlie that the high pressure is a slow process (=background) and disturbances more rapid processes". It makes sense to say that +10°C anomaly was caused by a slow high pressure and +10°C anomaly was caused by additional disturbances. Maybe it was +5°C vs +15°C but anyway we have the idea. If the upper-level wave is called "a block" because it was stationary, then the block is one of the additional disturbances and not the slow high pressure.
1. Even if you are an IP address, please don't forget signing your comments by four tildes (~~~~)
2. From what the sources said, the slow high pressure, as you call it, has evolved into a block as it was stuck between two low-pressure areas that were on the other side of the jet stream. The Rex block (which anyway redirects to the "plain" block) is the local term for the high-pressure area block that occurs more or less in the latitudes as the one discussed here, as you can easily check using Google. If it was a disturbance, well, it is only the case for the jet stream, but not really a disturbance per se. In any case, that's what the sources say for now and I will stick to them. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:02, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
1. I will consider it.
2. It would have been clearer if the NOAA text had given technical names but they did not since they just want to provide vulgarization. "as you can easily check using Google" means pseudo meteorology because many meteorological news and forecasts are written by non scientists. We will see what is written in future NOAA communications since they are supposed to have a good scientific level... 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:B844:D1F4:E1F3:8706 (talk) 16:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I have a reference: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/14/jcli-d-17-0554.1.xml#bib37 . This is the academic study invoked in the NOAA's webpage entitled "heat dome". The academic wording is "persistent anticyclones, blocking highs" which clearly relates to the monthly scale and can not be shown from one weather chart (daily scale). If most of the energy was brought by a weekly-scale process than can be tracked over a few weather charts, without any time for the monthly-scale feedbacks, then this extreme heat wave was not a "heat dome" process, following NOAA's considerations.2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:C8CE:EA08:A1A7:2B7A (talk) 10:02, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What about reading https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2366/Ready-for-summer-heat-Study-finds-new-primary-driver-of-extreme-Texas-heat-waves? which is longer version of https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html. In fact I do not know exactly why the short version have used the word "heat dome" which does not exist either in the academic study or the longer vulgarized text. Maybe to please the Internet community since it was used on the Internet since 2016 at least... 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:C8CE:EA08:A1A7:2B7A (talk) 10:01, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let's start from the elephant in the room: the articles here are about Texas and not Pacific Northwest, which are kind of different regions. Generally, if there is an article on a heat wave in Texas, this piece of research would be something we would include as a probable cause until research appears about this particular heat wave.
Let's get to another elephant in the room: NOAA in the short version says that "[The heat dome] happens when strong, high-pressure atmospheric conditions combine with influences from La Niña, creating vast areas of sweltering heat that gets trapped under the high-pressure "dome."" As simple as that. So at least calling it a "heat dome" does, in fact, follow NOAA's considerations. The heat dome need not last for a month (and fortunately doesn't).
Now, as to your objections that apparently we can't say that a ridge/high-pressure caused a heat dome - it is solved by the definition provided. The definition does not have a criterion of persistency.
If you have a stationary ridge at the same scale as the heatwave, then the ridge is the heat wave itself and you lose the causality. Unfortunately not, because saying that the ridge = heat wave is like saying that mountains = freezing temps. While normally true, we don't equate degrees Celsius/Fahrenheit with pascals, or metres. What is true is that the ridge may be associated with the heat wave, but that's what is in the text.
Mobile ridges are the crests of a wave train in the pressure field, this is the main definition at the mid-latitudes, and this fits very well to causality.
Here's the challenge: explain to a plain reader what the hell "crests of a wave train in the pressure field" means, find sources that relate this specific heat wave to the explanation you provided (or at least general commentaries suggesting that) and how this is incompatible with the notion of the "heat dome", which, as has been established, I hope, does not need to last long.
Could you give me any meteorologist (or even climatologist) saying that the "strength" of the "ridge", in a causal thinking, was an effect of climate change? 1) No need of scare quotes. We know what a ridge is; we say that a hurricane is strong or not i.a. by looking at the pressure in the eye. Such is the case here. 2) The high temperatures came as the result of a high-pressure system over Oregon and Washington. Climate change played a role in that system, said O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist. Therefore, the formulation "was linked to the effects of the climate change" seems adequate. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 01:28, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your tonality is just about winning the game, it does not please me a lot. Since Wikipedia writers have changed the scale of the heatwave now covering many regions and extending to mid-July, all the above discussion is partly out of date. But it would have been different considering the initial scale of the heatwave they wanted to describe. I would just rewrite into: "The heat wave appeared due to an exceptionally strong MONTHLY-SCALE ridge centered over the area, whose strength was linked to the effects of climate change." Indeed, the word "ridge" alone is used mostly for the daily-weekly scale. 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:D077:3E4E:675D:FB66 (talk) 16:46, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, I would remind you again of signing your posts please. That's the rule. Secondly, I have initially written the article describing dissipation of the system around 7 July, because that's when the low-pressure area carrying the remnants of the heat wave dissipated in the Atlantic. The editors who changed it probably knew something I didn't, so I let it go, and in fact, the scope of the article covers the whole heat wave during late June-early July, whose georgraphical scope was indeed huge. Thirdly, there's so far no evidence of "monthly-scale" exceptionally strong ridges, though there was certainly one for a week or so. For my part, Google Scholar does not yield any research papers yet about this particular heat wave. It might even be the case that it all was a continuation of mid-June heat when Arizona's oven started baking a little too strongly, who knows?
In any case, it seems we won't be able to agree on that - you can go to WikiProject Meteorology for assistance, but it seems that your question was answered there. You are welcome to ask for their assistance again and hope there is a professional meteorologist out there, of which there is no guarantee (if you are one, you can sure volunteer there). Please write back here for any result achieved in the discussion there, for now, however, I don't see any reason to change the article unless other Wikipedians agree to do so or if new evidence/analyses emerge, which I will try to add as they appear. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:44, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WWA said that the climate change was necessary to explain the absolute heat level. Meteorologists said that the event was caused by a ridge and that the local absolute value of the geopotential height was an all-time record. Your statement is that the causal ridge strength is linked to climate change whereas nobody said that. You want to put too much ideas into a single sentence. I would rewrite into:

"associated to a ridge, whose record strength is linked to climate change" (hence the record 500 hPa height) "caused by a mobile ridge, whose strength might have been exceptional" (link to the exceptional wave breaking) "caused by a monthly scale ridge, whose strength might be linked to climate change" (hence record monthly anomalies) 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:D077:3E4E:675D:FB66 (talk) 16:46, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Western North America is more precise and preferable in the title[edit]

Western North America is more precise and preferable in the title

Misleading wording on the ridge strength and climate change effect"[edit]

"strong ridge centered over the area, whose strength was an effect of climate change" is misleading. Record "height" values might be an effect of climate change, but it is not sufficient to say that we have a strong ridge. Indeed, in meteorology, the strength of a wave on surface weather depends on the energy of the wave after removing the background flow, and is also multiplied by the background jet stream. Since the ridge originated from a wave breaking at the exit of a strong jet streak on the Pacific ocean, this is the main information to understand the strength of the ridge, in meteorological terms. Some think that the wave breaking was stronger than usual and the jet streak also stronger than usual (meaning that the background jet stream was locally strong). 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:D19C:1BD0:1285:242C (talk) 11:50, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Too much carbon dioxide leads to wavier jet streams, this is climate science 101 mate. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that your sources are media articles written mainly by non scientists or non-specialized scientists (climatologists talking about meteorology). This is a meteorological tweet: https://twitter.com/KKornhuber/status/1410976078542393344 . Check carefully the number of precautions even in a single tweet. 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:D19C:1BD0:1285:242C (talk) 13:52, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's great, a tweet you surely cherry picked that doesn't even show if he's merely a scientific dude who says might if there's like a 0.08% chance it's luck not climate change (doesn't seem like a ton of precautions to me). Though the first replies suggest that this man might be one of those persons who full-court press minimize everything to the very edge of scientific plausibility to try to give renewable energy a slight headwind for God knows what reason, which appears to be what you're doing. There's nothing wrong with saying for instance that there is a 99.9% chance (or whatever the number is) that this event is climate change and not bad luck and it would be more informative and less useful for conspiracy theorists than the technically correct "might" (which could mean literally any percent besides exactly 100 and 0). See the difference? Climate scientists are the specialized scientists for climate change, not weathermen. A meteorologist saying the entire climate science field is bullshit would be like a good cricketer telling MLB, you try to hit home runs too much!, I am very smart. Meteorology knows jack shit about anything long enough for the butterfly effect to randomize the weather random number generator. What'll be the start temperature of the '22 Olympic opening ceremony? He knows jack shit, best he could do is find the climatology (the median temperature the last 30 times this p.m. happened on that day of the year is so and so, here's what it looks like when you graph the 30 data points, here's what it looks like if you add x dates either side of the opening ceremony too, things like that, meteorology does not say if the median is likely to be higher or lower in 2050, nor if the standard deviation will be higher (or more extremes and volatility in general, a prediction of supercomputer climate models, and the most Occam's razor hypothesis for a climate system with more energy available for weather to do stuff while space and central high Antarctica are not getting warmer anytime soon, look at what can happen when you get colder tropopauses and warmer seas - stronger hurricanes! or Gulf air and Arctic air in the same zone - tornadoes!)). It is climatology that studies the weights of the weighted random number generator. And how they change. Since a meteorologist doesn't have to look at climate models to predict the weather, or parrot someone else's prediction while looking handsome or pretty on smaller TV stations, they don't actually have to learn much about climate change to get a meteo degree or be on TV, thus a bigger minority of them are brainwashed to think global warming's bullshit, I can see how a predisposed individual who spent kilohours learning weather prediction might think they know so much they can dismiss their entire sister science as a vast conspiracy of the renewable energy-industrial complex. That must be it, the Moon hoax-sized conspiracy that's too poor to start ITER for a half century. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:17, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I personally wouldn't be as dismissive of the comment, but I don't believe that anything should be rewritten or that the text gets it wrong.
1. We are yet to wait for in-depth analyses in peer-reviewed journals, and so far that the heat dome (and the omega block) is the closest and the most cited justification for the weather pattern described in the article (and the guy actually does not deny the possibility + some sci-pop articles (Scientific American) have that explanation, too). I will be happy to change it to the peer-reviewed analyses if only I had the privilege to have them at hand.
2. Per the definition of block (and omega block in particular), Blocks in meteorology are large-scale patterns in the atmospheric pressure field that are nearly stationary, effectively "blocking" or redirecting migratory cyclones. The nearly stationary criterion is rather loosely executed in this case but it redirected cyclones very well, and it did stay June 25-28 (29) over the area in interior Washington/BC, so I'd say that calling it an omega block is justified. This does not preclude other explanations that could have intensified the heat wave (such as the characteristic shape of the initial placement of the anticyclone, though that sounds rather dubious to me as the terrain there is pretty rough and record highs were set on both sides of the Cascades, including in Quillayute and Port Angeles, both at the coast.
Whether the strength of the ridge per se was caused by climate change is rather unclear, but the heat almost certainly was and the article actually says that the heat amplified the ridge's strength, until it changed to a low-pressure area sometime while passing through the Rockies. Again, if a peer-reviewed article (or set to be peer-reviewed, at least) says that, I'll change it.
3. Record "height" values might be an effect of climate change, but it is not sufficient to say that we have a strong ridge. I beg to differ.
Ridges can be represented in two ways: [...] In upper-air maps, geopotential height isohypses form similar contours where the maximum defines the ridge.
If the maximum is strongest on record, we very certainly have a very strong ridge.
The Wikipedia's definition is wrong. The more you have a background gradient, the more the local maximum of the total field is distant from the center of the wave. Furthermore, I do not think that you capture well the strict meaning of my words. It is not sufficient means that mathematically it is not sufficient. I am trying to provide good education, that is separating the ridge strength from the climate change, which is meaningful, albeit inaccurate, whereas Wikipedia has done... the opposite, which is poorly meaningful! Now looking back at the discussion, I think I could have avoid complexity with improving my first message, but I have been immediately replied like if I was a child, so I have written new messages more teacher-like that led us to more technical points and that is not easy to discuss technical points of meteorology using Internet proofs (since your only reference is the Internet). 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:CE23:4FAC:640E:31BA (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you're using Wikipedia for teaching purposes you're free to issue any warning you may have about it's content to your students. Besides, your first assertion IMO is pure you-know-what. You're not giving considerations of homogeneity. And no, some of us may also have their own backgrounds in addition too. --Askedonty (talk) 15:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
4. Too much carbon dioxide leads to wavier jet streams, this is climate science 101 mate. I wouldn't be so sure yet. There are some indications to this, but I wouldn't leap to the conclusion that CO2 is certainly, or even very likely, to be contributing to the waviness of the jet stream. As is exactly written in the article.
Huh, so cause-and-effect were reversed. Interesting! And I haven't read the whole article. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
5. Since the ridge originated from a wave breaking at the exit of a strong jet streak on the Pacific ocean... I think it was more a coincidence of two factors: the one you mentioned and the migration of hot air north from the dissipating heat wave which roasted AZ, CA and NV. And everything of that was then seasoned strongly by climate change to yield an aroma of... wildfire smoke. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:50, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to pretend to know enough meteorology to do more than guess that their interpretation is stretching proper pattern terminology for the purposes of AGW minimization concern trolling but I have low patience for human(s) who are probably concern trolling. Out of curiosity is wave-x when polar graphs of the jet stream/Rossby waves with longitude changed to modulo(360°/x) look the most like x scribbles following an off-axis round shape? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:32, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your detailed reply but it would require a lot of discussion. If wikipedia promotes the idea of writing something from "public talks" while awaiting more academic studies, a rapid discussion is not possible. The tweet I have shown was only to show you the language used by meteorologists and future academic studies will be using the same language.2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:3C60:8E89:9D7B:6004 (talk) 22:49, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't entirely say it's "public talks". It is true that popular press is something that we should be cautious about while using as a source of scientific information, but we have quite a few sci-pop sources already there (which are quite OK as sources and can stay even with abundance of peer-reviewed articles) + we expect at least some of the news articles in reliable sources to get the thing more or less right, even if sometimes they don't delve deeply into the technicalities. Some of these additionally appear to consult experts in the field (I mean climatologists or weather/earth scientists; but in the US, we can also expect weathermen to be rather getting the thing right, even if they would sometimes make some exaggerations so that the layperson was yelling "MAYDAY MAYDAY we're all gonna die!"), so by far that's the prevalent explanation and so far the best we could sum up from available reliable sources, treating most of them with some extra caution. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:28, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is not true, future academic studies (and even the one that's already in the article) don't only say might (which is literally everything except 0 and 100%) they also say the actual probabilities. This is where you concern troll that you have to multiply the once in 150,000 years chance by the small fraction of Earth's surface area that reached such sigmas and this is where I say dude, you would have to look at a paper on the chance that the last few years has so many weather events of such high sigma. The amount of strong heatwaves in the world this year is so much that some of your mates are starting to give up and literally say 5G waves are blocking the heat rays instead. At any rate the world wouldn't have been hurt if someone had thrown renewable energy research a few bones in the past when the temperature hadn't deviated enough yet to prove "there's warming" or "the supercomputers are right" to a good p-value, the fossil fuels will get too scarce to not switch eventually, might as well wean off them in a few decades in case a comet impact winter happens and man really needs CO2. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While awaiting future academic studies that almost nobody will look at, Wikipedia is a reference for those writing articles in the mainstream media and influencing the people's mind. So why are you complaining about me? You are ruling the tonality of the mainstream media, I am just writing in the Talk section that nobody looks at. Climate change may have a role on the background gradients that were crucial to explain a massive wave breaking and the final strength of the ridge but if the World Weather Attribution group has made the exercise of associating the climate change component only to the background mean temperature, it is some kind of evidence that the former role deserves a lot of discussion. 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:3C60:8E89:9D7B:6004 (talk) 08:44, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is more of the other way, at least for now: we are the ones who cite the mainstream media. And if you are afraid of citogenesis, a valid concern, the remedy is to either get scientists to the article so that they discuss the meteo history here (go find them), or to substitute the MSM/sci-pop articles with actual studies when they appear, and simply don't forget to do that. And damn all media that copy from Wiki to write their articles, because it's 1) a violation of CC-BY-SA terms if they don't attribute it and 2) they should know better.
In any case, here's the task for you: find all the scientists (apart from Mr. Kornhuber) who have explanations that substantially differ from the one provided here in the Wiki article about the causes and mechanism of this heat wave (Clifford Mass has been discussed earlier); and preferably not just writing something on Twitter (I mean the same news articles, local news or MSM, or sci-pop). We will compare it to the number of scientists and meteorologists who said the stuff as presented on Wiki, and, if warranted, we'll include these explanations in proportion to the prominence of their argument. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My sentence about the power of Wikipedia was just because of some irritation. I do not want originally to discuss the processes of the heatwave but the phrase linking to climate change. My concern is that Wikipedia links the "ridge strength" to the climate change. As I have already said, Wikipedia probably used "ridge strength" as some kind of poetry to describe the height values. But just think that in educated meteorology, "ridge strength" would mean something else so that the link to climate change would be very ambitious in this context.
Alright Mr. Concern Troll, a ridge is literally a ridge on the topographic map of the 500 millibar surface, it reached the top of the color palette at high latitude which is really unusual, how is strong some bizarre poetry? Do you have anything better to do than attack the scientific consensus on this talkpage? You do know that a motivated high-functioning denier could feign belief and pass tests till he gets PhD so he can concern troll better and never pass peer-review of a genuine scientific journal right? Others got doctorates to perjure, bullshit and acquit predators after all. I think there's a few 120+ IQ Genesis 1 literalists who did the same thing and their bullshit isn't just another theory on the Cambrian article either. This is a good reason why PhDs with anti-consensus claims aren't treated as factual sources. This is an event with a 150,000 year recurrance time in the 1991-2020 or 20th century or pre-industrial climate or whatever they used in the peer-reviewed attribution study that's already in the article, the link to climate change is clear. That's not proof but technically even once in 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 year weather isn't proof either. How many nines do you demand before you stop greatly changing the gas the oxygen-makers breathe, acidifying the already 5.6 pH preindustrial rain with unneeded CO2 and so on? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I confirm that sometimes THIS increases my level of irritation. There is a confusion in Wikipedia's words but maybe you do not see it because you do not have a clear definition of a "ridge" and a "ridge strength". When Wikipedia says that "the event was caused by a ridge", this is annoying not to understand what is a "ridge" and what could be a "ridge strength" in a causal view. I am not sure that you understand well that we often invoke the climate change only as a heat increment to the whole meteorological analysis (independent on the ridge strength then) or even without giving its pathway in order to avoid any error.2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:CE23:4FAC:640E:31BA (talk) 12:39, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What is your definition of ridge? To be honest I have often thought it a bit weird that the elongation aspect of some 500mb ridges or troughs is secondary and they look more like domes or depressions. I assumed the axiality is emphasized more than in non-meteo English cause ridge/trough tilts strongly affect weather patterns, convergence/divergence and stuff and 500mb pressure centers rarely have zero closed or mostly-closed contours that look at least a little ridgy or troughy. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To ensure causality upon a heat wave, the ridge must be either at a scale much larger than the heatwave (monthly scale at least) or mobile. If you have a stationary ridge at the same scale as the heatwave, then the ridge is the heat wave itself and you lose the causality. Mobile ridges are the crests of a wave train in the pressure field, this is the main definition at the mid-latitudes, and this fits very well to causality. Could you give me any meteorologist (or even climatologist) saying that the "strength" of the "ridge", in a causal thinking, was an effect of climate change?
Okay, explain it all again, but after reviewing this document please*. If the ridge is the heat wave it's fine with me, I can change causality into identity well think about it I do not think that stands. But what about mobility suddenly deciding now I stand ? I build block. It's my block vocation therefore I block! You know that ridges, blocks, crests, are not material objects. They are shapes, and they are states, and the whole sequence(s) of them are dynamics. You're showing the basics of it quite clearly yourself. So what causality of the causalities of the elevation of upper crests your trains are to be not associated by any linkage to the basic (heating) disruptions the planet's climate is currently going under ? --Askedonty (talk) 22:26, 6 August 2021 (UTC) ( * images valid aug 12-16, 14-20 2021 )[reply]
I am sorry I do not understand everything. I think that you are overestimating the goal of the scientifical method. Physics states clearly that causality is, in general, a principle linked to proximity. Physics can not prove the causality, for a given event, of something too distant (in distance or scales) from the event. At scales close to the event, chaos can itself cause rogue waves without a need of a disturbance at much larger scales. If you have in mind many rogue waves, you can say that there is a disturbance at much larger scales, but in this case why not write it out? It would be then an article on "many heat waves in the world" and not "2021 western North America heat wave". You can also say that climate change disturbs probabilities, but this would be not a topic of causality in the traditional meaning. To conclude, I would say that the magic expression "caused by" is used much less often than what you think by the scientists because of the principle of locality. Meteorology can identify clear causes of a given event because it respects the principle of locality and computers were proven to reproduce accurately many meteorological situations in the past (notably in a post-event/reanalysis mode). The causes of the meteorological causes are not a topic in meteorology. The principle of locality prevents from looking the causes of the causes. I can understand that it brings frustration to stop at one causality level, but we can not change the scientifical method because of frustration.2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:9C6C:CC75:BCD0:3DBB (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That perceived overestimation is an effect of my perceived overimportance yourself are attributing to locality, and leading you to underestimate the influence of global warming, and refusing it has to be taken into account regarding the scope taken by the phenomenon. Locality in the principle of locality is not geographical. It's very much the assessment of how "causality" is to be determined. Your argumentation certainly deserves consideration as for determining what scientific understanding requires. But you are nonetheless quite wrongly assessing that we are linking warming with one given meteorological phenomenon as for its occurrence. We are linking to the occurrence of its strength: it's called "anomaly". Anomalies are primarily a notion of scope before, and only possibly explaining some particular occurrence. It may seem that linking the observation of an anomaly to the observation of the occurrence of its context would be the fallacious path for the determination of a causality? I do not believe that's what's being done here. Meanwhile the double meaning of locality does not justify for ignoring an occurence recognizable by itself as an anomaly [5]. Our causal linking without an explicit "anomaly" statement may remain disputable, it's nonetheless not intended contradicting meteorology. It has to be addressed and I think it's obvious in its own field, that is, that of statistics AND fact. --Askedonty (talk) 13:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"leading you to underestimate the influence of global warming". There might be some confusion since one part of my discussion was that the cause must be either at a much larger scale or mobile (meteorology) and the second part of my discussion is that the cause can not be climate scale because of the principle of proximity (general physics). But that is not easy to make a simple message since usually in the discussion we deal only with one scientifical domain (meteorology OR climate science). Because you are influenced by so many mainstream inaccurate commentators, you do not realize how much you mix up all scales, which is a nightmare for any technical discussion. The famous sentence "the event was caused by a ridge whose strength is linked to climate change" is a nightmare. Hence my discussion title "misleading wording". Correct wording is:

- a meteorological event has meteorological causes (principle of locality, climate science is not needed) - decadal-to-annual probabilities of a meteorological event mainly have climatological causes (meteorology is not needed) 2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:9C6C:CC75:BCD0:3DBB (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Resumed this way, that's correct for me. The part you are criticizing is not part of the main "Meteorological history" section. Its occurrence in the lead section, (please see: MOS:LEAD) depends on statements dependent of the "Climate change and additional factors" subsection (sharing same refs at least). Whether the subsection is legitimately placed is one question. the other regarding the lead, ie. how to describe climatology considerations without intruding into meteorology. Am I correctly inferring a notion of "pressure" should be holding place instead of "strength" ? --Askedonty (talk) 20:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK I am sorry if you are not the writer involved for the introduction. They wanted to combine several things into one sentence but they had not checked the final meaning like if you can just add up words and hope that it makes sense. They finally changed "strength" into "record strength" and this is slightly better. Yes, even better wording would be "record pressure/height" because for a meteorological article of the mid latitudes, "ridge strength" means subsidence strength. If climate change was to change mostly the background pressure/height, it would not change the subsidence strength or meteorological "ridge strength". Maybe "ridge strength" means "record pressure" to some of you but recall that the most astonishing event occured in a mid-latitude domain from a synoptic scale wave coming from the ocean. In some sense, most of the article should have been written from the discourse of Canadian or British specialized media and not from the US media since the main concept of a "heat dome" or "summer heat wave" in the US is dedicated to the southern US (see NOAA's and Washington Post's articles).2A01:E0A:9D2:3E20:B155:7738:4F07:34C2 (talk) 09:42, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Statements without evidence are moronic.[edit]

Right in the first sentence of this article we read, "an event virtually impossible without human induced global warming." The article then FAILS to supply ANY evidence demonstrating this imaginary linkage. I know that liberals and snowflakes think their feelings are evidence, but they're not. See, there's this thing called SCIENTIFIC METHOD and it rejects ALL UNSUPPORTED STATEMENTS. I embrace scientific method and so I wholeheartedly reject this statement AND whoever made it because I can. Enjoy that. MarshalRight (talk) 13:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are you trolling? There's buttloads of citations there, here's more: [6] [7] [8]. The climate scientists learned "fossil fuel bad" from the scientific method, not their feel feels. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:03, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If an event occurs >150x more often due to X, it means that without X, the chance of that event happening without X is <1/150x. We don't say "impossible", but <1% is almost so. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:28, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Citation Clean-Up and Quick Note About Scientific Investigations[edit]

Cleaned up the christmas tree of citations in the opening statement about climate change, since many of them were secondary sources with the same primary source. Since that indicated some contention on the claim, I changed the wording to specify exactly what the study was and what it found.

However, that seems a little wordy for the introductory paragraph of an article. If anyone wants to re-word or move that around I'd gladly welcome it, but we need to be careful to differentiate between "is" and "may be" when citing early statistical analyses of climate-related events. Using definitive phrasing is not a correct summary of the source, because the research is published with the implicit assumption that it's not guaranteed to be accurate.

In general, it seems like there may be a need to clean up some of the citations and make sure we're not multi-citing the same piece of work through secondary sources. Anyone else have thoughts?Louisvaught (talk) 10:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

August 2021 North America heat wave[edit]

August 2021 North America heat wave was redirected to this entry. I'll let editors decide if that's the best course of action longterm. Happy editing! ---Another Believer (Talk) 18:39, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some more sources missed in the article[edit]

I've got no time adding it now, but I hope other editors will make use of these: [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15] ([16]), [17], [18], [19] Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:45, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And more (some not peer-reviewed): [20], [21], [22] [23] (summary), [24], [25], [26] Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Damage estimate?[edit]

I saw on the NCEI billion dollar page that there was $8.9 billion due to heat waves. It credits it to the whole year but only mentions 229 deaths, the same as here. So should we cite this damage total? 108.170.65.170 (talk) 00:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The NOAA treats it as a single event, and since this heatwave was the one that essentially caused the vast majority of the damages, the figure can and should be used for the heatwave. I've gone ahead and added the damage estimate. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 11:33, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good article nomination (?)[edit]

Should this Good article nomination be reverted? ---Another Believer (Talk) 15:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would almost certainly say yes, just looking as a passerby. NoahTalk 01:11, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
 Done I've removed the nomination. Someone can re-nom if interested. Thanks! ---Another Believer (Talk) 01:14, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, this should be a GA nominee. To most wiki projects, right now what it looks like is our WikiProject is spending more time arguing about colors then it is about getting articles to GA status. The article was nominated because it is nearly at GA level, and our WikiProject doesn’t have a lot of GA nominations. For our WikiProject to gain more respect, it needs to get more GAs. And if the colors are preventing TC articles from being GA, why not nominate an article that is about as far away from a TC as one can get? The nomination should be reinstated. 98.113.8.17 (talk) 20:19, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are numerous unsourced statements and maintenance tags that suggest this article hasn't been updated throughout. In regards to the colors, how about the fact that most of the major writers are either in full-time jobs or college/part-time job at this point? Most are probably so drained that they don't want to write much else, if anything, that's academic-related. NoahTalk 14:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Contrary to what you said, there are zero maintaince tags, nor citation needed tags. (And one cn tag shouldn’t hold up a GA nomination either.) also, academic literature is a requirement for FA - not GA. If our WikiProject does not know how to get articles to GA, we will receive even more flak than forgetting to update our colors (which it appears has been going on 14 months, two reverted colors, one ArbCom case, two users indefinitely banned from weather articles…etc). If it’s really this hard to update colors, and you haven’t considered WP:DRN at this point…idk what to tell you. But we have an open GA oppertunity. The GA reviewer should get to decide the issues, not someone who heavily wrote up the article. As such the GA tag should be reinstated. 98.113.8.17 (talk) 14:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you actually going to address the concerns raised during the review? I don't want an editor to waste time completing a review if the nomination is just going to be abandoned. ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:47, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is moot, as the GAN process no longer allows nominators who are not significant contributors to nominate articles. I have therefore removed the nomination. Even before the most recent change, a non-significant-contributor nominator was required to consult with those who were on the article talk page, and that wasn't done here—and the consensus is clearly that the article isn't ready, so the nomination should not have proceeded anyway. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:06, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It’s a little difficult when the article is about as filled as it can be, and the contributors are WP:SQSing in regards to the nomination. Not to mention WP:OWN.98.116.45.220 (talk) 21:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Starting Larger Edits for Concision[edit]

Glanced at this article again and noticed it has an "excessive citations" flag, which seems appropriate since we're over 300. It looks like people have mostly added minor amounts of new info, without checking if it's overlapping with old citations. I started to clean things up but I didn't want to make extensive edits suddenly and unilaterally.

My plan is to begin by removing the long lists of citations after certain statements that definitely don't need them, probably starting in the heat records section.Louisvaught (talk) 00:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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