2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

This is the actual year by year frequency of record low maxima in the CET (1878 to 2021). Where two years are tied (which is about ten per cent of days) each day is given a count of 0.5, and in the one case with a three-way tie, those have a count of 0.33.

The "decades" that are shown here are in the order of 1870-1879 to 2010-2019, not ending in zero like most tables show decades. And the two stubs at either end of the table are both two years in duration. The count so far in 2020-2021 is zero (2021 does have some record low minima, but not low maxima).

The adjusted total for 1878-1879 is to make that stub comparable to the decades that follow.

FREQUENCY OF LOW MAXIMA (CET 1878 to 2021)

Year ending ___ 0 ___1 ___ 2 ___3 ___ 4 ___5 ___ 6 ___ 7 ___8 ___ 9 ____ total (adjusted)

1870s _______ -- ___-- __ -- ___-- ___-- ___-- __-- ___-- _ 1.0 _ 13.0___ 14.0 (70.0)

1880s _______ 5.0 _14.0 _1.0 _ 4.0 _ 1.0 _ 2.5 _ 2.0 _ 5.0 _18.5 _ 1.0 ___ 54.0

1890s _______ 5.0 _ 8.5 _12.5 _2.0 _ 5.0 _10.5 _ 2.0 _ 2.0 _ 2.0 _ 2.0 ___ 51.5

1900s _______ 1.0 _ 3.0 _ 6.0 _ 6.0 _ 6.0 _ 2.5 _ 2.0 _ 3.5 _ 6.0 _ 3.0 ____ 39.0

1910s _______ 0.0 _ 3.0 _ 8.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 2.5 _ 0.0 _ 3.5 _ 4.0 _11.0____ 32.0

1920s _______ 5.5 _ 1.5 _ 5.5 _3.33 _0.0 _ 2.0 _ 3.5 _ 1.0 _ 2.0 _ 6.0 ____ 30.33

1930s _______ 3.0 _ 4.0 _1.33 _0.0 _ 1.0 _ 2.0 _ 2.0 _ 0.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 ____ 15.33

1940s _______ 2.0 _ 2.0 _ 1.0 _ 0.0 _ 1.0 _ 3,5 _ 0.0 _11.5 _4.0 _ 0.0 ____ 25.0

1950s _______ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 8.0 _ 0.0 _ 4.0 _ 0.0 _ 6.0 _ 1.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 ____ 19.0

1960s _______ 1.0 _ 0.0 _ 3.0 _ 3.0 _ 2.0 _ 2.5 _ 4.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 _ 0.0 ____ 17.5

1970s _______ 0.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 _ 3.0 _ 2.0 _ 1.0 _ 5.0 _ 3.0 _ 6.0 ____ 23.0

1980s _______ 2.5 _ 6.0 _ 3.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 _ 2.5 _ 4.0 _ 3.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 ____ 23.0

1990s _______ 0.0 _0.33 _ 0.0 _1.5 _ 1.0 _ 2.0 _ 1.0 _ 1.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _____ 6.83

2000s _______ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _____ 0.0

2010s _______ 7.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 3.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 0.0 _ 1.0 _ 3.5 _ 1.0 ____ 15.5

2020s _______ 0.0 _ 0.0

=================================================

(note: 2021 had the lowest minimum for 7, 12 and 13 April but on those three dates the low maxima failed to set records by margins of about four degrees even looking at the days before the record low minima -- for example the max on 5 Apr was 6.4 and 6 Apr 6.7, but these were nowhere near the low max records from 1911 of 2.3 and 4.1 C. Minima had fallen below the 1911 record for 7th and the existing records for 12th-13th by about one degree. The 11th-12th maxima were 8.0 and 9.2, the records being 5.4 and 3.7 both set in 1879. By the 12th, the record low maximum was 3.7 from 1892 and 2021 had 12.0 -- so in at least this one case the diurnal range was much larger in the recent case, probably due to an absence of snow cover).

Also if you check 1962-63 in the table you'll see a rather meagre total of 6 record low maxima, not all of them in the winter (one was in June 1962), and that may seem quite low given the reputation of 1962-63 as a very cold winter, but other than a spell in late Jan 1963 all the other cold parts of that winter were slightly outdone by much briefer cold spells in other winters. The winter of 1947 fared better with numerous records set, and Nov-Dec 2010 also did quite well. So this table does not tell a complete story as would be the case for any other single element; what it does say rather clearly is that record cold is quite unusual in the modern climate and that is probably because arctic air masses are infrequent; when they do arrive they still set records as seen in winter 1981-82 and four days setting 3.5 record count in the period 28 Feb to 18 Mar 2018.

One other feature worth a mention is that the average duration of record cold spells is about 3 days (the records tend to cluster for an average of three and a maximum of about seven, slightly longer clusters can be found if one day can be excluded within any group of five to ten). One of the longest strings of record low maxima was at the end of October 1895 with seven. November 1919 had six in a row. It has become very unusual since 1950 to find three in a row. This suggests that when deep cold does arrive, it gets pushed away faster than in the colder climates of late 19th and early 20th century.

I'm sure you and the others probably include me as one of those in question.

I'm in Kerry for the weekend and have little interest or time to be posting continuously here. But I've scanned back through the thread now. From what I can see, MT's opinion hasn't changed, except for a slight increase in his percentage anthro-contribution. I don't see it as the U-turn that some have said. Earlier in the week I posted my thoughts in the 2050 competition thread, and mine is a less pessimistic forecast than MT's. There's nothing new there. We've been through this discussion many times before so forgive me if I haven't dragged it all up again.

I'm choosing to ignore the posts by some in reply to his post (you know who you are) as life's too short to waste a nice weekend away by getting into the usual argument. My outlook on life has changed after something I witnessed recently, so I really couldn't care less what MT, Danno, Akrasia, Nabber, Birdnuts or the trolls or bot have to say. Each is entitled to an opinion, but none will change what will ultimately happen. I've completely lost interest in the topic of weather/climate now so if you don't see me posting then don't jump to conclusions. I equally haven't replied to others' posts either, not just MT's. Tyrone, you're the "lucky" one.

You've got it in one. Bang on. Well done you. You don't post often, but when you do it's always so full of wisdom. I wish to be more like you.

Climate change is happening, we know what's causing it and we know that it will get worse and worse as long as we continue to increase the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere

We need adaptation strategies but if we don't also have mitigation strategies we're playing Russian roulette with our own species extinction

The Netherlands are going to raise their sea walls because they know rising seas are an existential threat to them but they also know they cannot survive if sea levels rises are not curtailed. We need Both mitigation and adaptation with the focus on mitigation strategies to limit consequences to manageable levels.

If we fail our children and grandchildren are screwed

So easy to draw out the vermin...

It's not just sea level increases, its the potential collapse of our food supply along with political instability that happens when populations are displaced.

Civilisations have collapsed before...

They certainly have but none had the technological advances that we enjoy today. It's nearly impossible to predict what technology will be in place in 10 years time nevermind trying to predict 30 years down the line. I'm an optimist at heart and firmly believe we will find solutions before it's too late.

Just one detail that I noticed about my desalination proposal, whatever the poster read into that, my obvious intention was to use the desalinated water for irrigation and urban water supplies, not to then dump it into some country -- the part where some countr(ies) need to offer their available low-lying land areas comes before the desalination, so first you have sea water being stored then some of it (the more the better the outcome) is then diverted into desalination which further removes it from the hydrology cycle (water just stored can evaporate and some of that can find its way back into the oceans).

I recognize these are large-scale proposals, but we could have started into this ten or twenty years ago, the need for additional fresh water in many arid regions is obvious, and the potential for irrigated farming to expand is considerable.

Political considerations make it difficult to envisage that west Africa would be an ideal location, but for all other factors it is ideal already. There is a vast area of Mauretania that is actually slightly below sea level already, dunes prevent the Atlantic from spreading into that large depression. So that could become a natural location for one such project. Once again, while I never mentioned either Somalia or Vancouver, somebody opined that I wanted to flood Somalia to save Vancouver. As with any other country, there are suitable areas for ponding and desalination in northern Somalia and nearby Djibouti but these are unstable regimes and probably hostile to any sort of co-operation with the developed nations, so I wouldn't look for progress there although I would welcome it.

By the way, Vancouver is not going to suffer as much as many other places if sea levels rise by half a metre or a metre as I have suggested could be inevitable. Some southern suburbs (Richmond and parts of south Delta) are low-lying and would need higher seawalls than already exist around them, but Vancouver's coastal areas are fairly hilly and can probably tolerate a rise of several metres in some cases.

I feel at peace with my efforts to do unbiased research and to let the results take my opinions wherever the data point. If I saw strong evidence that all the warming since 1950 was only AGW then I might change my opinions about our chances, but in any case I don't strongly oppose the climate change response agenda, just some of the details. One concern is that political interests in the background are cynical, and their attempts to close down the fossil fuel industry in Canada (which meets with only limited and regional opposition within Canada) is meant to take away our market share so that other countries can take the lucrative contracts, especially those with China and other Asian consumers who are not going to be changing very much, and then all that is actually accomplished is to provide the same quantity of fossil fuels (including coal) to those markets, but from other countries. My more significant concern is that we get caught in the paradigm of looking only at prevention and losing more valuable time for planning mitigation strategies that might take all the time we have left.

Such things have been with us since Humans evolved - and the stats show that less people are dieing of natural events than at any time in the past several millennia. Energy wars?? whats that??

I have nothing against desalination, especially if it's done using carbon neutral energy and It is definitely going to be a part of our adaptation to climate change.

Its just not any kind of a solution to rising oceans. not even in the slightest.

Also, desalination has been shown that it can be used for irrigation and 'greening the desert' but again, these things can be used to adapt to the loss of our traditional breadbaskets as groundwater is depleted and drought and heatwaves make farming unproductive. Expensive desalination projects won't do much for the billions of subsistence farmers who may not be able to afford to connect to expensive private water schemes

The focus now, needs to be on reducing the amount of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere so that we do not need to spend mind blowing amounts of money and resources replacing things that are lost to climate change (for those who can afford to, while the poor are left to fend for themselves, or take matters into their own hands)

We've already seen the callous disregard for low lying island nations, their countries are, right now, sinking into the sea, and we have people in pinstripe suits arguing, (while getting paid or influenced by the fossil fuel industry) that we should possibly think about maybe starting to take action in 9 years time, maybe

Alarmist rhetoric again.

IPCC support your extinction theory?

I wouldn't think that a one metre sea level rise would be anywhere near an "extinction event" although obviously it would be a major strain on infrastructure in many areas and a threat to survival in a few. A seven metre sea level rise (what happens if all of Greenland melted down) would be a serious challenge but of course it would happen over about a century of time giving time for phased responses to it. A forty metre sea level rise (what happens if Antarctica were to lose all of its ice) is something that probably won't happen at any point but if so it would be at least 300-500 years from now, and a fairly long duration rise of many decades. It would result in a very stressful situation for the human race, no doubt about that, but extinction? Why? At least half the world's current population lives more than 20 metres above sea level. Most of the world's agriculture takes place above that elevation. A forty metre rise in sea level would basicaally turn Memphis into New Orleans and Albany into New York City. The Great Lakes are all above 70 metres (Lake Ontario) so the Atlantic would flood Montreal, parts of Ottawa but not the Lake Ontario basin.

About two-thirds of Ireland would be underwater and half of Britain (at forty metres of rise). I don't foresee this happening by the way, my scenario for warming would begin to change gradually to steady state and then cooling over 300-500 years. We do have the modestly favourable Milankovitch factors on our side, eventually. I don't think those will amount to much over the first century ahead of us though.

I am glad people are thinking about what I said but would prefer to issue my own comments rather than just having people guessing what I would say about such questions. There is no real extinction potential in a one metre sea level rise.

As to desalination not using significant amounts of water from the oceans, that depends on how large the schemes are. You have to realize that the process is ongoing every day, so however much water is used to create one day's worth of fresh water then multiples by the number of days. I think that twelve large projects would use quite a significant amount of ocean water. More so, if water is diverted into extensions of ocean volume inland. That is also a continuous process, not just a one-off diversion on one day, that water inland would continue to evaporate (it's the nature of salt lakes in deserts to evaporate quickly). Just keeping about ten of the world's best known inland salt lakes level would require diversion of a lot of water. Since I mentioned this, I learned that the governments of Jordan and Israel have plans to do exactly this for the Dead Sea which has dropped by about ten metres since 1960 (and is way below sea level). They would pipe the water in from the Gulf of Aqaba.

We don't have a lot of time left to get started on such projects, and the idea that we are going to "fix" the climate just seems like a lost cause to me, I never thought there was enough AGW in the NV+AGW sum to make it sensible anyway, but by now it just can't be done, whatever your opinion of that balance, there is simply too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now. Unless we can develop carbon sink or scrubbing technologies that work on a large scale, then we are stuck with it. And as soon as the Sun gets more active, I feel absolutely certain that warming will resume at a stronger level than the past 5-10 years.