hi this is kate from minute earth not to
be confused with 1985's
hurricane kate only my parents can call
me that
anyway in case you are tipped off by
that disastrous intro
today we're bringing you four stories
about extreme weather
starting with this piping hot video
the earth has a lot of warm places
forest fires
lava flows iron foundries the inside of
your toaster oven nuclear reactors and
so forth
but if we're just talking about regular
old sun heats the earth climate and
weather
where on the earth's surface is hottest
some might say death valley which isn't
a bad guess as the 56.7 degrees celsius
temperature observed 100 years ago at
aptly named furnace creek remains
according to official weather statistics
the highest temperature ever recorded
however weather stations measure air
temperature in the shade about a meter
and a half
above the ground and as you know if
you've ever walked barefoot across a
beach on a hot day
surfaces in direct sunlight can be a lot
hotter than the air
just above them plus there are only 11
119
official weather stations scattered
across the globe which equates to only
one station every 13 000 square
kilometers
or six on average for an area the size
of scotland not that scotland is a
leading candidate for heat waves
super hot places like deserts are
particularly harsh and remote
making weather stations impractical and
even less common
so to find the true hottest place on
earth we need an
army of meteorology students to install
and monitor thermometers on every inch
of the planet
or we could measure the temperature of
the earth from space
which nasa does every day the terra and
aqua satellites carry
instruments called spectroradiometers
which detect the infrared radiation
that is the heat radiating from the
earth's surface their resolution isn't
amazing since the satellites measure
temperature averaged over each square
kilometer of the globe
but that's still 13 000 times better
than weather stations
so the winner for hottest square
kilometer on earth not furnace creek
it only clocked in at 62.7 degrees
celsius nor the scorched wheat plateau
in the luche desert of iran despite
repeated claims to be the hottest place
on earth
however it's close a nearby portion of
the loot desert is the winner at 70.7
celsius or 159.3 fahrenheit
that's one degree hotter than you need
for the proteins in an egg yolk to
coagulate
that is to cook no need for your toaster
oven breakfast
is served
now that's a hot day i don't care to
experience
but that breakfast did look excellent
next up a rising tide carries all boats
but the news isn't quite so good for
those of us on land
over the millennia city dwellers have
found lots of effective ways to protect
themselves against invaders
but the forces of nature have been
harder to keep out
especially because most cities lie along
coasts and major waterways
in 1362 a storm aptly named the great
drowning of men wiped out a string of
european settlements
killing more than 25 thousand people in
the centuries since low-lying places
like the netherlands have developed an
impressive array of water defense
systems
including verdin dykes ditches dams
locks and picturesque water pumps
and in the mid 20th century the dutch
began building an ambitious series of
storm surge barriers that are among the
largest movable human-made objects in
the world today
but with sea levels projected to rise by
as much as a meter in the next 90 years
and three more meters in the following
century it's clear that even the efforts
of the dutch won't be enough
nor is the netherlands alone cities all
over the world face similar threats not
only from rising seas but also from
warming waters that are brewing stronger
scarier storms since keeping all of this
water out may simply not be an option
people around the world are getting
creative inventors in the uk have
created thirsty concrete capable of
soaking up
600 liters of water per square meter
every minute and funneling it away
dutch engineers are designing floating
homes and shopping centers that can bob
along on rising seas
and who knows the storm-driven waves
that threaten cities today
might one day provide enough energy to
power them
floods of data are changing how cities
deal with storms too
helping model where a storm is most
likely to hit and visualizing where
evacuations might need to occur
we've also gone back to our roots salt
marshes in mangroves and tidal zones can
reduce wave height and total wave energy
by more than 50 percent
research shows that combining these
natural features with engineered ones
could avert hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of storm damage in coastal
urban areas such as new york's howard
beach
but so far cities are far from fully
storm-proofed
we still need to gather more information
and develop more solutions to make them
as resilient as possible
it's a good thing urban areas are
innovative hotspots where great ideas
are constantly flowing
they just need to flow out faster than
the water can flow in
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so we're going to have to do a lot more
to figure out how to keep our heads
above water in the coming years
speaking of which if you've ever bought
flood insurance or
any kind of insurance really you've
probably heard the term
acts of god but what does that actually
mean and what does butter have to do
with anything
in 1903 an unprecedented flood struck
kansas
wreaking havoc on homes farmland
infrastructure
and an entire train load of butter the
creamery sued the rail company for its
lost cargo but the railroad argued that
they shouldn't be responsible since the
flood had been completely out of their
control
the court agreed ruling that the flood
had been an act of god
courts around the world have actually
been using the term since the 1500s to
describe
unprecedented events that seem to come
out of nowhere
today you'll see acts of god mentioned
in contracts
insurance policies and a few u.s
environmental laws
and like in the butter case you might
hear a lawyer milking the term as a
defense in court
to use the act of god defense you don't
have to prove that a god actually caused
the event you just have to prove
two things one that taking reasonable
precautions
couldn't have prevented the damage and
two that the damage was caused by a
natural force with no
human influence but it's getting harder
and harder to meet these criteria
starting with the reasonable precautions
thanks to improving technology and
scientific knowledge
we're increasingly able to predict the
size scope
and path of destructive events which
raises the bar for what kind of
reasonable precautions might be required
to stave off damage
for instance back in 1903 the railway
had put the butter car on what seemed
like high enough ground to keep it safe
but they had little way of knowing how
severe the flood would be
today with a lot more flood knowledge
they'd have to better prepare the butter
for the act of god defense to stick and
the second criteria is also harder to
meet because we're finding that an
increasing number of natural disasters
do have human fingerprints on them for
instance human activities have led to
the warming and rising of the ocean
which almost certainly intensified
hurricane sandy in 2012
and likely exacerbated europe's 2015
heat wave
in fact scientists estimate that some of
sandy's catastrophic
effects like the flooding of vital
transit tunnels
which added more than 10 billion dollars
of damage might not have happened
without the effects of human activity
since natural events like floods
droughts and wildfires are happening
more often and doing more damage than
they used to
we may actually be seeing more active
god cases pop
up in court in the future but because
we're becoming better i mean
better at predicting those events and
recognizing our own contributions to
them the success of the act of god
defense
may soon be relegated fully to the
margarines
okay no matter what you spread on your
bread we can probably
all agree that that ending pun could
have been butter
i mean better one thing we can't all
agree on
is how we actually experience extreme
weather in the first place
take a look is the weather getting
weirder
your answer probably depends on the
weirdness of the weather you've been
experiencing lately
for example after the uk got doused with
one of its rainiest weeks on record
the brits who reported experiencing
flooding were much more likely than
their drier compatriots to say that
they'd noticed wetter and wetter weather
over the course of their lives
and before a withering drought struck
the american midwest in 2012
only 41 percent of residents thought
they detected a long-term
uptick in the frequency and intensity of
dry spells
but after that one desiccating summer 66
said they've been seeing worsening
droughts for decades
rain or shine our minds tend to prize
their freshest impressions
but even when we experience the same
weird weather events as other people
we don't always agree on how weird they
actually were
data from more than 4 000 meteorological
stations tells us that the winter of
2012 was the third warmest on record in
the us
but according to the americans who lived
through it
well those who thought of global climate
change as a serious man-made threat were
significantly more likely to report that
their local winter weather had been
warmer than usual
even after adjusting for beliefs about
global warming there was a political
divide
with democrats more likely than
republicans to rate the winter is
unusually toasty
clouding the issue further these days we
get less of our weather information
firsthand and more from the media
where different channels compete for our
attention by mentioning extreme weather
far more often than they used to
and spicing up not so apocalyptic events
with terms like
polar vortex and snowmageddon
the weather channel has even co-opted
the world meteorological organization's
practice of naming destructive tropical
storms
by christening every biggest snowstorm
that trundles over north america
with so many sources of information it's
easy for us to choose the ones that
align with our broader world views
no matter what they are as a result much
of what we hear about the frequency of
extreme weather
can end up reinforcing what we already
believe rather than giving us new
information about what's really going on
so did this video tell you what you
wanted to hear
and with that i'm off to broaden my
world view
come hell or high water and finally you
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alarming trend among our stick figures
baldness
100 of stick figures inevitably end up
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