from Hacker News

Countries that will suffer the most temperature change from global warming

by matco11 on 7/16/23, 1:04 PM with 52 comments

• by Luc on 7/16/23, 1:36 PM

  Link to supplementary notes with tables containing more countries: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs418...

• by gmuslera on 7/16/23, 1:55 PM

  The problem are not yearly averages, but outliers. Never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep. As long as extreme cold somewhat "compensate" extreme heat your average temperature may not be so different from what it is today, but your day to day life may not be exactly enjoyable, to say the least.

  Frequent enough extreme weather events can ruin crops, damage infrastructure and make unreliable to live there for the long term, even for industrialized countries. Once in a century extreme weather events are happening every few years now. And no countries are safe from that.

  About reaching global yearly average temperature of 2ºC by 2050, we already reached 1.5ºC as global average temperature for some days. This year, due to El Niño conditions that officially started some weeks ago, we are breaking records so bad that there is a big enough visible gap against the trends on the last 40+ years. The change is not smooth nor linear. And we are getting conditions that defies any average.

• by karmakaze on 7/16/23, 2:17 PM

  Cooling Degree Days seem to have varying definitions (from other references):

  > Cooling degree days (CDDs) are a widely used measure of heat exposure and cooling demand. It measures how much the mean temperature exceeds a reference temperature each day over a given period, using the dry bulb temperature. For example, considering 18ºC as the baseline temperature for CDD calculation, a day with a mean outdoor temperature of 30°C, has 12 CDDs (30-18). If the next day has a mean temperature of 28°C, it has 10 CDDs. The total for the two days is, therefore, 22 CDDs.

  > Degree days are measures of how cold or warm a location is. A degree day compares the mean (the average of the high and low) outdoor temperatures recorded for a location to a standard temperature, usually 65° Fahrenheit (F) in the United States. The more extreme the outside temperature, the higher the number of degree days. A high number of degree days generally results in higher levels of energy use for space heating or cooling.

  So this all seems quite arbitrary. As everything warms I suspect that we'll be adjusting that base temp from 18'C/65'F to something warmer that is still tolerable. In the summer I find 24'C indoor temps to be just fine as long as humidity doesn't get too high.

• by criddell on 7/16/23, 1:37 PM

  I wonder if there are some countries that will see a net benefit from global warming?

• by xwdv on 7/16/23, 1:52 PM

  Some of these numbers don’t feel compatible with human life.

• by JaggerFoo on 7/16/23, 2:06 PM

  I notice that Mexico and Australia are not included on the extended list, I'm not sure what that says about the study or the two countries.

• by WithinReason on 7/16/23, 2:12 PM

  Due to how CDD is defined, this just seems to become a list of hot and cold countries.

• by Simulacra on 7/16/23, 1:34 PM

  US is not even on the list.