Current Heatwave in Canada and USA ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Global Warming

The extreme weather conditions of scorching heat in the region of western Canada and the United States during the last week of the month of June have been said to be ‘virtually impossible’ without the severe climate changes. According to a research study done on the recent heatwave in Canada and the USA, it has been found that the deadly wave of extremely hot temperature was a one-in-a-thousand-year occurrence.

Although similar to these events, the general population of the region should expect these changes to become common as the entire planet is heating up due to climate change which is majorly caused by global warming.

Extreme high temperature

If the humans living on Earth had not influenced the changes in the climatic condition to such extreme extent which have occurred right now, these hot temperatures and heatwaves in Canada and the USA would have been 150 times less likely to occur.

Scientist is worrying that the global heating of the planet, which has largely occurred due to the excessive consumption and combustion of fossil fuels, is increasing the Earth’s temperature at such fast rate than the previous models have predicted, resulting in a more frequent heatwave in Canada and USA, along with the rest of the world.

The climatic research team has gotten used to observing the records broken by the heatwave, which have occurred throughout the world in the past recent few years. However, the record-breaking heatwave in Canada and the USA is up further by 4 degrees in a single occurrence and happened in the previous week, which is virtually unprecedented.

The previous record of extremely high temperature nationally across Canada was 45C, but due to the recent heatwave in Canada and the USA, it has been recorded that 49.6C high temperature occurred in the village of Lytton located in the province of British Columbia. This was just before when the entire village got destroyed largely due to a sudden wildfire.

Throughout the region, in some of the states of the US, namely Washington and Oregon, along with the western region of Canada, multiple major cities have observed high temperatures which were far above 40C.

These sudden high weather temperatures had some of the deadly consequences over hundreds of residents of the region, with an increased death toll caused by sudden unexpected events and an escalation in the number of individuals visiting their local hospitals due to heat-related illness.

Since the beginning of the heatwave in Canada and the USA, people have previously linked the extreme and unusual nature of weather events to climate change. Now, the team of researchers is saying that these current changes in the climate that are being observed, including the heatwave in Canada and the USA, would not have been possible without human-induced global warming.

‘Virtually impossible’

A team based on 27 international climate researchers working at the World Weather Attribution network have been able to provide a comprehensive analysis of the weather data in the time duration of just eight days.

To no surprise, due to the quick turnaround, the recently conducted research is yet to be peer-reviewed, after which it would be eligible for publication. During the study, the researchers have used 21 models of climate to gain an approximate estimation of the climate changes which have influenced the rapid heatwave in Canada and the USA, including cities like Vancouver, Portland, and Seattle.

They were able to compare the data obtained of the current climatic conditions of the world and compared it with a model of the climate of the planet without human-induced global warming. From the study, they were able to conclude that this one-in-a-thousand-year event would have been 150 times less likely to occur if we exclude the possibility of global warming, which has extensively damaged the entire planet.

If the current global warming induced by humans had not occurred, the Earth would have been cooler for about 1.2C, and the heatwave of Canada and the USA would also have been slightly cooler at around 2 degrees in the past.

The co-author of the study, Dr. Friederike Otto from the Oxford University, had explained the meaning of this research and the meaning behind it when they said that the extremely high temperatures were ‘virtually impossible’ without the climate changes.

She said that without the extra amount of greenhouse emission gases in our atmosphere, in the statistical data that they had available with the models, along with the statistical models which were based on the observational information collected previously, such an extreme event could not just occur without cause.

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