In 2017 I wrote a blog post -- http://blog.ifost.org.au/2017/01/farewell-to-cold-winters-and-hello.html -- inspired by the heat wave that Sydney was experiencing at the time. Funnily enough, it's the last day of 2018 and we're having another heatwave. I've updated some of the charts, and created a new Jupyter notebook.
All the examples I'm showing here are in github. If you are learning data science, it shows
some useful techniques (pandas, zipfiles, linear models).
https://github.com/solresol/endless-summer/blob/master/cities-of-summer.ipynb
Sydney
It "feels like" winter in Sydney when the maximum temperature is below 20. It means you have the heater on (or for me it means I need to light a fire). It feels like summer when the minimum temperature is above 20; you have to sleep with at least a fan and you can dive into the pool or sea any time of the data or night and it isn't uncomfortable.
I was born in 1972, and my mother said that being pregnant with me that summer was awful, and the summer at the beginning of 1973 was worse. She spent a lot of time in the pool that summer. So let's look at 1972 and 1973, 50 years ago and 100 years ago, and the most recent few years.
| Year | minimum_above_20 | maximum_below_20 |
|---|---|---|
| 1859 | 1 | 146 |
| 1918 | 7 | 127 |
| 1968 | 41 | 120 |
| 1972 | 21 | 119 |
| 1973 | 48 | 109 |
| 2016 | 70 | 79 |
| 2017 | 81 | 87 |
| 2018 | 61 | 98 |
So yes, she wasn't wrong -- 1973 was pretty incredible. It's just that 2018 (which was pretty mild) was even worse.
Let's just put that in perspective. 100 years ago, sweltering days where the temperature never got below 20 were really rare. Here's the complete list of them from 1918.
| Min | Max | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | |||
| 1918-01-15 | 20.6 | 25.8 | 1918 |
| 1918-01-22 | 20.6 | 26.7 | 1918 |
| 1918-01-25 | 20.1 | 26.2 | 1918 |
| 1918-02-04 | 21.6 | 27.2 | 1918 |
| 1918-02-10 | 21.1 | 24.9 | 1918 |
| 1918-02-12 | 20.8 | 27.3 | 1918 |
| 1918-03-05 | 20.5 | 26.9 | 1918 |
We've had more than that in the last two weeks of December 2018. We might even have 7 days continuously if this heatwave stays.
Cold days vs Hot Days
So is Sydney becoming the city of endless Summer?
We can plot the difference between those two charts. For each year, how many cold days were there, and how many hot nights were there?
- Who wants to take a bet on the first year when there are more summer-like days than winter-like days?
- (Equivalent) When do you think the chart below is going to hit 0?
I'm guessing around 2020, even though the trendline suggests it won't happen until 2030 or later.
We'll declare Sydney the city of summer, because we won't have much of a winter.
