WaPo: A city in Oman just posted the world’s hottest low temperature ever recorded: 109 degrees

Temperature difference from normal at 10 p.m. local time Tuesday in Oman analyzed by American (GFS) model. (TropicalTidBits.com)

by Jason Samenow, Capital Weather Gang, The Washington Post, June 27, 2018

Over a period of 24 hours, the temperature in the coastal city of Quriyat, Oman, never dropped below 108.7 degrees (42.6 Celsius) Tuesday, most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth.

For a location to remain no lower than 109 degrees around the clock is mind-boggling. In many locations, a temperature of 109 degrees even during the heat of the afternoon would be unprecedented. For example, in nearly  150 years of weather records, Washington, D.C.’s high temperature has never exceeded 106 degrees.

Quriyat’s suffocating low temperature, first reported by Jeff Masters at Weather Underground, breaks the world’s previous hottest minimum temperature of 107.4 degrees (41.9 Celsius), also set in Oman, on June 27, 2011.

Masters received word of the exceptional temperature from weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera. Incredibly, the temperature in Quriyat, Masters said, remained above 107.4 degrees (41.9 Celsius) for 51 straight hours. Its blistering afternoon high temperature of 121.6 degrees (49.8 Celsius) Tuesday was just about two degrees shy of Oman’s all-time heat record and its highest June temperature, Masters reported.

Quriyat, sometimes also spelled Qurayyat, is a small fishing village in northeast Oman adjacent to the Sea of Oman that spills into the Arabian Sea. The city’s population is just over 50,000, and it is about an hour southeast of Muscat, Oman’s capital.

This sweltering episode marked the second exceptional weather event to affect Oman in as many months. In May, Category 3 Tropical Cyclone Mekunu slammed into its southwest coast, making landfall near Salalah. It was the most intense tropical cyclone to make landfall on the Arabian Peninsula on record.

Tuesday’s record-breaking heat resulted from a strong, high-altitude, high-pressure system or heat dome anchored over the region, which pumped air temperatures up to 15 degrees above normal. Masters said sea surface temperatures in the adjacent waters were about 90 degrees, keeping air temperatures elevated even through the night and offering no reprieve from the oppressive conditions.

Tuesday’s 109-degree low, while the highest known, is not official and remains unverified. Although the World Meteorological Organization validates and maintains records for the hottest maximum world temperature, it does not do so for minimum temperatures.

Nevertheless, assuming it is legitimate, this weather extreme adds to a tremendous number of hot-weather milestones established around the world in just over the past year, which include:

• In April, Pakistan posted the hottest temperature ever observed on Earth during the month of 122.4 degrees (50.2 Celsius).
• Dallas had never hit 90 degrees in November before, but it did so three times in four days in 2017.
• In late October 2017, temperatures soared to 108 degrees in Southern California, the hottest weather on record so late in the season in the entire U.S.
• On Sept. 1, 2017, San Francisco hit 106 degrees, smashing its all-time hottest temperature.
• In late July 2017, Shanghai registered its highest temperature in recorded history, 105.6 degrees (40.9 Celsius).
• In mid-July, Spain posted its highest temperature recorded when Córdoba Airport (in the south) hit 116.4 degrees (46.9 Celsius).
• In July 2017, Death Valley, Calif., endured the hottest month recorded on Earth.
• In late June 2017, Ahvaz, Iran, soared to 128.7 degrees Fahrenheit (53.7 Celsius) — that country’s all-time hottest temperature.
• In late May 2017, the western town of Turbat in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees (53.5 Celsius), tying the all-time highest temperature in that country and the world-record temperature for May, according to Masters.

All of these heat records are part and parcel of a planet that is trending hotter as greenhouse gas concentrations increase due to human activity. The past four years have been the hottest four years on record.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/06/27/a-city-in-oman-just-set-the-worlds-hottest-low-temperature-ever-recorded-109-degrees/

Harvests will shrink as the planet heats up and crops will be less nutritious

Shrinking harvests likely as heat increases

A warmer world could mean shrinking harvests and a more meagre diet for millions of people, according to two new studies.

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, June 19, 2018

LONDON – A hotter world could also be a hungrier one, with shrinking harvests and poorer quality plants. As planetary temperatures rise in response to ever more profligate combustion of fossil fuels, climate change could lower the yield of  vegetable and legume crops – and at the same time reduce their nutritional content.

And the same high end-of-the-century temperatures could raise the risk of massive, near-global losses for the world’s most widely grown cereal, maize.

This double blow comes close upon the evidence – from field trials over many years – that another global staple, rice, is likely to become less rich in protein and vitamins as temperatures increase.

British researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they studied 174 research papers based on 1,540 experiments in 40 countries between 1975 and 2016, on the probable effect of changes in water supplies, ozone, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and ambient temperatures, on vegetables and legumes.

They found that on the basis of changes predicted for later this century, average yields of vegetables could fall by 35%, and legumes by 9%. There has been evidence that more atmospheric carbon dioxide could fertilize more plant growth, but other accompanying changes – greater extremes of heat, drought, flood and so on – could cancel out any such gains.

“As the planet warms, it becomes more likely for different countries to simultaneously experience major crop losses”

Pauline Scheelbeck, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the study, called the finding “a real threat to global agricultural production, with likely impacts on food security and population health.”

Scientists have been warning for at least five years of the potential impact of climate change on agriculture and food supply: other studies have shown that fruit and vegetable supplies could be at risk.

There has also been evidence that heat extremes could damage wheat yields while endangering food supplies across the whole of Africa, and at the very least test the capacity of global markets to cope with sudden harvest failures across whole regions.

US researchers report – once again, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – that they took a fresh look at the response of markets to what they call “volatility” in the global crop of just one cereal: maize, or corn.

Heavy dependence

This is grown widely: it is a staple for humans and fodder for livestock; it provides oil for cooking and has even been turned into fuel for motor cars. It is traded worldwide, but four countries – the US, Brazil, Argentina, and Ukraine – account for more than 85% of all exports. The chance that all four exporters would have bad harvests in the same year right now is almost zero.

But under a warming of 2 °C – a level which 195 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to keep well below – this risk would rise to 7%. If global temperatures rise by 4 °C, which is what will happen if humans go on burning ever more fossil fuels, the chance that all four maize exporters would have harvest failures at the same time rises to 86%. And, if that happened, corn prices would rise dramatically.

“When people think about climate change and food, they initially think about drought, but it’s really extreme heat that’s very detrimental for crops,” said Michelle Tigchelaar of the University of Washington, who led the research.

“We find that as the planet warms, it becomes more likely for different countries to simultaneously experience major crop losses, which has big implications for food prices and food security.”

https://mailchi.mp/climatenewsnetwork/shrinking-harvests-likely-as-heat-increases

Europe's Largest Asset Manager Sees 'Tipping Point' on Climate Risk Pricing

The world’s deepest-pocketed investors are starting to take climate change seriously, according to Amundi SA.

by Anna Hirtenstein, Bloomberg, May 30, 2018

“We are really observing a tipping point among the institutional investors on climate change,” said Frederic Samama, co-head of institutional clients at the Paris-based firm. “Until recently, that question was not on their radar screen. It’s changing, and it’s changing super fast.”

Risks from global warming range from damage to physical assets from extreme weather to falling prices on fossil fuel-related assets, as the world moves away from burning coal and oil. Bank of England governor Mark Carney has repeatedly warned that these risks are not priced in adequately and that investors may have exposure to a “climate Minsky moment” if they don’t take action.

Amundi’s remarks hold weight because it has 1.4 trillion euros ($1.6 trillion) under management, making it the largest asset manager in Europe. It runs the world’s largest green bond fund with the International Finance Corp. and is planning to deploy $2 billion into emerging markets. Mainstream investors are beginning to recognize both the threats and opportunities coming from climate-related issues, Samama said.

“If we have this major shift required in terms of how we manage the planet, for sure it will impact the asset prices,” he said. “Can we evaluate the automakers without taking into account the new bans of diesel cars? Can we evaluate the fossil fuel industry without taking into account the risks of regulation related to the drop of the price of renewable energy?”

The Paris climate deal reached by representatives from nearly 200 countries in 2015 sent a signal to the global economy that decarbonization was on the agenda. As just about every industry comes under pressure to become greener, the rules will change for the asset owners as well. France was the first country to make it mandatory for investors to disclose the carbon footprint of their portfolios, mandating it in a law the same year.

Another reason that institutional investors’ views are evolving is the availability of green financial instruments, according to Amundi. The asset manager developed low-carbon equity indexes, removing the polluting companies from commonly-used ones such as the S&P 500 and MSCI indexes. Investors from the California State Teachers’ Retirement System to Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund are shifting their portfolios to these indexes, according to Samama.

“It means that if nothing happens, you have the market returns and that if the opposite, if polluting companies are getting penalized, they will bring the index down and if you have excluded them, you will outperform,” he said.

Green bonds are another avenue for redirecting institutional capital into environmental projects. The industry has soared from non-existence just over a decade ago to global issuance of $163 billion last year.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/2018/05/31/europe-s-largest-asset-manager-sees-tipping-point-on-climate