Close to 600 people died in British Columbia’s June 2021 heat wave. As it occurred during an abnormally low tide, billions of mussels, clams, sea stars and other invertebrates are believed to have perished. Some of the marine devastation was on Cortes and Quadra Islands. A new record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada was set, but a new study from the University of Bristol found worse heat waves in other times and places.
Lead author Dr Vikki Thompson, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, talked to Cortes Currents about the study and what it says about future heat waves.
“The heatwave last summer in your part of the world, in Western Canada and the Western U.S., was a shockingly extreme event,” she explained.
“After that happened, we were thinking was that the most extreme heat wave that the world has seen? Have there been more extreme heat waves in other areas? And using models, can we look at how it’s going to change into the future?”
Thompson explained that you can’t just compare a heat wave in India, where temperatures rise over 50 degrees almost every year, to a heatwave in Canada.
You have to see how far each heatwave goes outside of the normal temperature range for each area.
from Vikki Thompson et al, The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally
“We found that there are five more extreme [heat waves] that have happened in the past. Some of those events were quite a way back in time and our method removed any climate change signal from the trends,” said Thompson.
- Southeast Asia – 24 Apr, 1998 – 33°C (5.1 standard deviation)
- Southern Brazil -16 Nov, 1985 – 36°C (4.3)
- Southern U.S. -13 July, 1980 – 38.4°C (4.3)
- Alaska – 7 July, 2019 – 23°C (4.2)
- Southwestern Peru – 24 January 2016 – 23°C (4.2)
- Alberta – 30 June, 2021 -36°C (4.1)
Thompson said her team looked at temperature values, not the impacts these heat waves have on the ground.
They also looked into models of what will happen as the average global temperature rises.
“As the global temperature warms up, all the models do warm up. We will see more extremes, compared to the levels of today. They will be more intense, but that increase is only going to be in line with the global mean warming,” said Thompson.
She predicts there will be more heat waves over the next 60-70 years and by 2100 “they would happen once every six years” or so.
Top photo credit: Relief! – photo by Guian Bolisay via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)
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