Australia’s southern states are scorching in extreme heat that could break temperature records in Victoria and South Australia on Tuesday.
At Ouyen and Mildura in north-west Victoria, temperatures of 49C were forecast for Tuesday afternoon. If reached, they would break the state’s all-time temperature record of 48.8C, set in Hopetoun on Black Saturday in 2009. By 1pm, temperatures of 46.2C in Ouyen and 44.8C in Mildura had been recorded.
At Ouyen and Mildura in north-west Victoria, temperatures of 49C were forecast for Tuesday afternoon. If reached, they would break the state’s all-time temperature record of 48.8C, set in Hopetoun on Black Saturday in 2009. By 1pm, temperatures of 46.2C in Ouyen and 44.8C in Mildura had been recorded.
In Adelaide, the mercury hit 40C before 9.30am on Tuesday, after overnight lows of 35C, BoM observations showed.
Extreme heat is the most common cause of weather-related hospitalisations in Australia, and kills more people than all other natural hazards combined. What does exposure to extreme heat – such as a temperature of 49C – do to the body?
I wonder if ACs have doom loop effect. They produce more heat than cold, so eventually you need to deal with even more heat (on a global scale), prompting even more AC use
The AC is just moving existing heat around, basically evicting it from an enclosed area.
I’ve read that it can add to the “heat island” effect of large cities, but globally I don’t think the AC’s themselves are the problem, it’s the carbon in the atmosphere that holds the heat of the sun in, as well as the fossil fuels still used broadly to power the AC’s adding to that carbon.
Yes. Making and running AC’s contribute straight in to carbon emissions, so its a feedback loop.
I don’t have any proof, but I’d imagine AC alone would be insignificant on planet scale.
Anything short of us detonating enough nukes to light up the atmosphere.
It’s the sun’s energy getting trapped by our emissions that we need to worry about.
its an AC stupid it makes it cold! Your thinking of a heater
The Doom loop is actually more to do with architecture that is not designed with hot temperatures in mind, because it’s assumed that central air conditioning will be used.