The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society has confirmed that a high-pressure system caused a heat wave in 2021, breaking Canada's temperature record..“Climate change was not the sole cause of this event,” wrote scientists..“While no single comprehensive and quantitative theory can be universally applied to all extreme temperature events, heat waves in summer can often be attributed to blocking highs, a high-pressure system that is stationary,” researchers wrote in a Society Bulletin. .According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the heat wave in British Columbia lasted for six days and caused a lot of problems. It was responsible for 619 deaths and led to many forest fires. During this time, the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was reached..On June 29 at 4 p.m., Lytton, BC, reached a daytime high temperature of 47.7 degrees. This broke the previous record of 45 degrees set in Yellowgrass, SK, on July 5, 1937..Weather and climate factors are complex and should not be oversimplified, said the Bulletin. “There is no doubt that increasing background temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change made this heat wave hotter and therefore more extreme.”.“However, the record-breaking temperatures of recent extreme weather events such as this heat wave are a combination of anthropogenic climate trends and internal variability that has always been able to cause large anomalies in temperature,” wrote researchers..“Understanding of our complex interacting climate system remains incomplete and quantitative estimates of the contribution of anthropogenic factors to this heat wave have relatively large uncertainties due to the many interacting factors that may play a role, including moisture,” said the Bulletin..During the Lytton heat wave, the Meteorological and Oceanographic Society stated that the event could not be solely attributed to climate change..“The driving factors here are not completely understood,” Dr. Faron Anslow, a climatologist with the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium of Victoria, said in an interview at the time. .“I think, like any event, when you dig into the details, there’s a whole lot to analyze. But we’re virtually certain that climate change played a contributing role here.”.“Interestingly, some people in the climate change denying community have said that we’ve cherry-picked the data,” said Anslow. .“You can look at any event, even the most mundane day, and make it completely unique and unexplainable by anything but an extremely complicated set of processes and thereby isolate it from any broader scale.”.Professor Cliff Mass, a meteorologist with the department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, in a July 21, 2021 commentary, called the heat wave “an extraordinary concurrence of weather features,” a “freak event” that “would have happened anyway” due to natural phenomena. .“Media and politicians are totally obsessed with the negative, particularly in environmental matters,” wrote Mass..In July 1936, the deadliest heat wave in Canada killed 1,180 people in Manitoba and Ontario, which included 400 drownings. .Daily temperatures reached over 40 degrees, buckling train tracks in White River, ON and forcing factories to close in Winnipeg.
