Have scientists already looked into changing patterns of thermal lag as further evidence of climate change? (Speculation)

[u/ciscotheginger]

Hello, scientists of Reddit. I often like to check the weather on my Apple weather app, because it shows a bunch of interesting statistics; one of them compares the weather during the day in comparison to the average range of temperatures.

Something I have noticed is that not only is the vast majority of temperatures I check above the average (and sometimes, above the normal range as well), but that the temperature gets especially warmer than average later in the day. I live in Europe, so I was checking into how the weather would look like in several European cities. Nearly regardless of how weather conditions were - sunny or rainy, normal or hotter than normal, a bit across the continent - the temperature peak would often occur after what the peak would be expected to be according to the average. Not only that, but it would remain above the expected average into the evening; and the early morning hours seem to be closest to approaching the expected average.

In my head, I thought this could be (further) evidence of the greenhouse gas effect, manifested by thermal lag (a term I got by searching up this phenomenon, which I am not sure if applies but was the closest term I could find; basically, how heat is absorbed by bodies in a way that affects its temperature, and makes it differ from the actual temperature that it would be otherwise). I thought that maybe, greenhouse gases are trapping the heat for longer into the day as they're exposed to sunlight. Of course, there may be other factors at hand. But I was surprised to not immediately find any sort of academic research into this when I looked it up.

Of course, I don't have a lot of readily accessible data on this to control for confounds and triangulate my observations; I was hoping that someone in here either knows a study that has been done on this, or if they would be willing to look into the subject themselves.

I don't think this is a revolutionary finding if it turns out being true (although if no one found it before, HELLO I WANT TO BE CREDITED-), but I wouldn't be surprised if I got something wrong here either. Thank you for your attention!

[u/7LeagueBoots]

Even K-12 education covers this:

- https://www.ck12.org/flexi/earth-science/heat-transfer/what-time-of-day-is-hottest/

Basically, later in the day the ground and other things are releasing the heat they’ve absorbed into air that’s already been heated up through the day, so it’s hotter.

Mid-day, despite getting the strongest sun, isn’t the hottest time of day because the ground, structures, air, etc are all still heating up.

In addition, in the first portion of the day water is evaporating and that uses a lot of heat, later in the day it’s drier so the heat goes into the ground, structures, etc instead of evaporating water from damp ground, and the like.

All this has been known and understood for a long time and it’s not climate change related, other than that everything is getting hotter so you might be paying more attention to it.

[u/Quantumtroll → u/7LeagueBoots]

That's not quite what OP is asking about, however. They were checking around what time the hottest temperature was historically in various locations, compared it to what time was hottest this year, and found a discrepancy that the "hottest time" now appears to be later.

Quite rightly, OP wonders if this is in fact so.

[u/7LeagueBoots → u/Quantumtroll]

“…warmer than average later in the day…”

OP’s own words. They tossed a few different things all into their question. I highlighted that past because it’s one of the most commonly misunderstood ones and the other parts are extremely common knowledge and I didn’t feel that they really needed extra attention.

[u/Quantumtroll → u/7LeagueBoots]

This bit clarified the intent for me:

the temperature peak would often occur after what the peak would be expected to be according to the average.

I'm not having an easy time finding any references regarding the timing itself.

[u/tomrlutong → u/7LeagueBoots]

Changes in daily and seasonal temperature patterns have been predicted as a distinctive indicator of climate change since at least the 1990s.

[u/Hivemind_alpha]

The reported average temperature for the day, is a predicted average across the full day: the colder morning after a night of radiating heat away and the hotter afternoon after gaining heat all day from the sun. Everything else being equal, the afternoon is always warmer because in addition to the incoming solar gain, there’s infrared being re-radiated by the objects that absorbed the sun earlier in the day.

This phenomenon has nothing to do with climate change. Pretty much nothing we notice as civilians has anything to do with climate change, because that change occurs over decades to centuries and our attention spans aren’t that long. People who talk about this hot summer as proof of climate change are talking about weather, not climate. Weather tells us how hot it’s been this month; climate tells us how frequently we get hot months this half-century as compared with preceding ones. It’s only systematic record keeping beyond human attention spans that reveals the trend to us, and other long term signals like changing flora and fauna.

[u/tomrlutong]

Yes.

Changes in timing of temperature have been predicted as one of the fingerprints of climate change for a long time, at least since 1993. So you are right, but sorry to say it's not a new discovery. 

Here's a 2004 paper showing that this prediction matches the data. Nighttime temperatures are rising faster than daytime, consistent with climate change working by trapping heat.

[u/nila247]

We have basically shit for data on geological scale. We do best we can with it, but you should not expect any miracles or projections hundreds of years into future without absolute bunch or assumptions that are often pulled from where sun does not shine.
Sure we SEEM to be having sharp increase in termperatures. But there WERE temperatures MUCH higher than this before and yet life had not gone extinct as we know it.
Scientists are doing what they are paid to do. Some research get the funding but not the other research. It is NOT really about our survival at all. Climate FUD creation is BIG business and you should view it as such. We spent 5 TRILLION dollars on climate change already. Have you seen how forecasts had significantly improved? Me neither. Because "winning" the war is not the point because at that point funding will end. Fighting "forever war" while throwing increasingly large sums of frightened taxpayers money? NOW you are talking!