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[–] Ragnar1234 ago 

I am glad you clarified that. I am certainly no expert on temperature conversions!

Secondly, I find it hard to believe that a difference of 1.6F is going to be the cause of an entire lake disappearing.

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[–] boltsand 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

I think it might have an influence, since they're talking about average temp rather than just it being 1.6 degrees hotter all the time.

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[–] usernameistaken ago 

While the temperature change might look small, the overall effect can be quite significant between temperature changes. Given the size of the earth and the amount of energy it takes to heat or cool, a 0.9C is a significant amount.

Think of it this way. To boil a litre of water to 100C it takes 20mins of heat. to take the water to 100.9C in the same amount of time, you need to add more heat. Now imagine heating the water on earth to that extra 0.9C, which will take a lot of heating since time remains the same. So, even though you are only seeing a 0.9C change, the amount of heat earth is being subjected to pretty massive. which in turn results in lakes drying up, rainfall shortage, fires etc...

Here is an article i found from NASA that may be helpful.

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[–] Teh_Sauce_Guy ago 

To convert absolute temperature, you just put some numbers in. But to covert temperature change, you would calculate the initial temperature in F, the final temperature in F, and subtract them from each other.

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[–] KyJoCaThe2nd 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Not really required, but that works.

The conversion is set up exactly as a y=mx+b formula, but let's think about what goes into it.

F = C * 9/5 + 32

Let's use the states of pure water to define our equations. Any two equivalent pairs of temperatures work, but water state changes are probably the most well-known.

Let's imagine we're using F as our y-axis of a graph with C as our x-axis. We know that water freezes at 0C and 32F and boils at 100C and 212F. W can call these the points (0,32) and (100,212), so now we need to define a line that connects those points. The b is just the y-intercept, or the y-value when x=0, which we clearly see is 32. To get the slope, m, we need to calculate rise over run, or how much the line goes up while going out. So we take (F2-F1)/(C2-C1) and get 180/100 which can be reduced to 9/5 or written as 1.8. And there we have our conversion: F=1.8C+32.

How is that useful to just convert a change in temperature? It shows us that for every 1 degree change Celsius, we have a 1.8 degree change Fahrenheit, so 0.9ΔC = 1.62ΔF. The extra 32 degrees are only needed if we need to convert between actual temperature values instead of just changes.