tiny global warming question? why hasn't Death Valley surpassed its 134F record of 1913?

Question

or why hasn't Las Vegas surpassed its record of 117F? (Personally - I could have sworn LV hit 120F in 1973)

whiz kids are still kids. With no experience you can be defensive. Lucky for you 'merc' came along to save your face.

Answer 1

it's the polar ice caps (both arctic and antarctica) along with the Greenland ice sheet and Himalayan glaciers. These big ice masses are soaking up the heat from global warming by melting. When ice and snow melt (their physical state changes from solid to liquid) - it absorbs an amount of heat equal to the 'latent heat of liquification' while holding the temperature steady. It's similar to what happens when the ice cubes in your beverage melts. As long as there are ice cubes melting in your beverage, the temperature won't rise and your beverage stays cool. But when the ice cubes are gone, then you notice your drink is getting warmer and you put in more ice cubes. When the polar ice caps (along with Greenland and Himalayan glaciers) are melted or mostly melted, Death Valley and Las Vegas will rise and surpass their old record temperatures. Imagine Las Vegas at 134F and Death Valley at 150F. I hear the arctic ice cap is 40% gone, so we should be about halfway there.....

Answer 2

The global warming hype depends on you not using you brain to think up good questions like this because they don't have good answers for these questions,you may accidentally cause someone else to start to think for themselves and no telling what could happen then,I have a nice little project for all the doom and gloomers out there put 8 or 10 ice cubes in a glass fill it to the top till it almost over flows then walk off and leave it for some time when you come back you will see that as the ice melts the water level goes down not up and over,oh no there goes all that hype about ice caps melting and flooding all the continents

Answer 3

i live near death valley
where i live 20 years ago it avg 18 days a year over 120 degs
in the last 4 years we have not had a day over 120.
if this is global warming i am all for it

Answer 4

The way this data is recorded could be a factor. Maybe it never was all that hot and what difference does it make? If you are thinking about global warming its the avarage global temperature everyone is worrying about.

Answer 5

Maybe because it is a long-term trend, and since the earth rotates unevenly as it goes around the sun, it affects different parts of the earth at different times. The real impact is supposed to occur at the north and south poles.

Answer 6

If you knew the slightest thing about Global Warming you'd understand why the answers to questions like that have nothing to do with it. Maybe somewhere there's a Death Valley website or a Las Vegas website where people are just pining away wishing someone with a question like this.

Answer 7

For the same reason other places in the dry area of California haven't reached their heat potential. While the rest of you poor people are sweltering we are getting cooler out here in the west. For this we would gladly accept global warming as a long awaited answer to year around air conditioning. Did you know that Palm Springs, CA has 3 days of winter in the early part of January when they receive less than a half inch of rain? How can I encourage global warming for those of us who need it?

Answer 8

Weather in one place at one time can do pretty much anything.

Global warming is about long term temperature, averaged over the whole globe. Here's the data:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/new_Fig.A.lrg.gif

Answer 9

Global warming isn't about record temperatures, it's about average temperatures

Answer 10

this is caused by global warming.

other things that are caused by global warming:

cavities
full moons
poor tv reception
the color purple.