This temperature was recorded in Penticton, in the center of British Columbia.
Le Monde with AFP
After providing global concerns with suffocating this summer under a historic heat dome, a western region of Canada has endured this week a new record mercury climb … up to 22.5 ° C. This temperature was recorded in Penticton, at the center of British Columbia, the most west-western province of Canada that has been rehearsal for several months.
“It’s a record, or it’s a record” dating back to 1982 in Ontario, said Thursday to the France-Press agency (AFP) Armel Castellan, Meteorologist at Environment Canada.
Penticton, which has some 33,000 inhabitants, is a few hundred kilometers from Lytton, municipality 250 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, who recorded the historic temperature record in Canada with 49.6 ° C , and which was destroyed 90% by a forest fire. In Penticton, “the absolute record was 11.2 ° C in 2012, then yesterday the maximum temperature was 22.5 ° C, so that’s a record,” said AFP Gregory. Yang, Meteorologist at Environment Canada.
This region of the interior of British Columbia is also the one that has undergone this summer the effects of the “historic” heat dome, which has made more than 500 deaths, followed by significant fires. “Since the month of September, we had a lot, a lot of heat coming from the subtropics,” explained Armel Castellan.
For about a week, an “atmospheric river” falls on southwestern British Columbia. Violent precipitations have caused catastrophic floods since mid-November in the province, events that have been related to the effects of climate change by the authorities.
An unusual winter heat also in the United States
Recent studies show direct responsibility for climate change in some heat waves. Thus, the extraordinary heat wave in Canada in June 2021, with temperatures grazing the 50 ° C, would have been “almost impossible” without the warming, according to the scientists of the World Weather attribution.
The unusual winter heat has extended to the whole northwestern United States, where heat records for one month of December were beaten or equaled Wednesday at different points of the States of Washington, Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota. Temperatures could be greater than almost 20 degrees Celsius to normal. Thursday, this warm front has shifted towards the center of the country, with for example a heat record for December 2 recorded in Omaha, in Nebraska, where it was 20 ° C Thursday afternoon.
The American West faces in recent years to more and more marked weather hazards in California in particular. The California authorities are planning as far as the next year a heat wave warning system that ranks each of these episodes according to the number of dreaded deaths in order to promote preventive measures. As for hurricanes, each heat wave would be assigned a name and index of dangerousness.
Rather than just saying “he will do 40.5 ° C”, the alert would indicate “Here’s how many people will die”, summarizes in the Washington Post Larry Kalkstein, Scientist Advisor of the Adrienne Foundation Arsht- Rockefeller who promotes this initiative. Mr. Kalkstein’s team provides three categories of heat waves. An index phenomenon 1 would not have a major risk, with an increase in mortality between 0% and 10%. Category 3 would be much more mortifying, comparable to the exceptional heat wave in the northwestern United States and in British Columbia last June.