Comments 1 to 8:

1. nigelj at 07:28 AM on 1 July, 2018

   High night time temperatures are horribly uncomfortable, and will become more prevalent with climate change. People in Oman can afford air conditioning, but other countries may not afford it so easily. I find anything above 23 degrees celsius at night makes sleeping very difficult, so Omans temperatures are almost unimaginable for me.  

   In addition, when tempertures becomes very high combined with moderate to high humidity, it can be lethal. Climate change will expose large areas of the planet to potentially lethal temperature and humidity combinations. So not only is air conditioning going to become more and more essential, people will live in constant fear of power cuts. Some areas may become uninhabitable, creating more migrants to deal with, and we already know how difficult that becomes. Ask Europe.

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2. Mark D at 15:47 PM on 4 July, 2018

   Could you tell me what data you have used to conclude: "most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth."?

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3. michael sweet at 21:06 PM on 4 July, 2018

   MarkD:

   Official records of highest minimum temperature are not kept.  Maximiliano Hermano is a private weather researcher who everyone cites.  Jeff Masters has a post here about this record.

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4. michael sweet at 21:09 PM on 4 July, 2018

   Sorry, I mispelled Maximiliano Herrera's name (I need my glaswses in the morning).

   His web site is here.

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5. AJC1973 at 15:06 PM on 14 July, 2018

   I can only remember every winter when there are record lows and I'm supposed to think its only weather... why isn't this only weather?

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   Moderator Response:

   [DB] Because natural variation still exists in a warming world.  We can see this by looking at global temperatures for December-February:

   

   And for Northern Hemispheric temperatures for the same season:

   

   Which is born out by the research, which shows that Northern Hemispheric winters have been warming:

   "Employing reanalysis data sets, several threshold temperatures at 850 hPa are used to measure the wintertime (DJF) areal extent of the lower tropospheric, Northern Hemisphere cold air pool over the past 66 cold seasons. The analysis indicates a systematic contraction of the cold pool at each of the threshold temperatures. Special emphasis is placed on analysis of the trends in the extent of the -5°C air.

   Composite differences in lower tropospheric temperature, middle tropospheric geopotential height and tropopause-level jet anomalies between the 5 coldest and 5 warmest years are considered. Cold years are characterized by an equatorward expansion of the jet in the Pacific and Atlantic sectors of the hemisphere and by invigorated cold air production in high latitude Eurasia and North America. Systematic poleward encroachment of the -5°C isotherm in the exit regions of the storm tracks accounts for nearly 50% of the observed contraction of the hemispheric wintertime cold pool since 1948. It is suggested that this trend is linked to displacement of the storm tracks associated with global warming.

   Correlation analyses suggest that the interannual variability of the areal extent of the 850 hPa cold pool is unrelated to variations in hemispheric snow cover, the Arctic Oscillation, or the phase and intensity of ENSO. A modest statistical connection with the East Asian Winter Monsoon, however, does appear to exist.

   Importantly, there is no evidence that a resurgent trend in cold Northern Hemisphere winters is ongoing. In fact, the winter of 2013-14, though desperately cold in North America, was the warmest ever observed in the 66-year time series."

6. scaddenp at 15:27 PM on 14 July, 2018

   Better questions AJC1973 to ask are:

   1/ Are there more record highs than lows?

   2/ Is my area typical?

   3/ What are the temperature trends? Climate is 30 year averages. It is the trend that matters.

   If your record lows are from record snowfall, then get used to it. Warming puts much more water into atmosphere and if your area gets below freezing in winter, then it will fall as snow. The good news, is that spring will likely come sooner and summer will be hotter.

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7. scaddenp at 19:07 PM on 14 July, 2018

   To help with Question 1, try here. Only for US however.

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8. michael sweet at 20:35 PM on 14 July, 2018

   AJC1973,

   As Scaddenp suggested, the question is do we get more record lows or record highs.  It will be a long time before it is so hot that there are never any record lows.  Similarily, it will always snow in winter if you are far enough north.

   According to the NCDC Weather Records page, in the past 365 days in the USA there have been 71,000 daily record highs and 37,000 record lows.  I.E. there have been twice as many record highs.  That is a pattern that shows global warming.

   For all time records, which are much more difficult to set, in the past 365 days there were 168 record highs and 21 record lows.  Eight times as many high records. 

   For the Global all time records we see 330 all time highs and 47 all time lows.  Do you start to see a pattern?

   Deniers cherry pick the occasional lows and make a big noise about them.  The mainstream press only mentions the highs when there is a striking anomaly, like recent world wide heat.  If you don't pay attention you hear the deniers and don't notice the pattern.

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