CANADA — After a region in western Canada sparked global concern this summer when it suffocated under a historic heat dome, this week saw another record high in mercury…up to 22.5C.
Penticton in central British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, which has been suffering repeated extreme weather events for several months, took this temperature on Wednesday.
“It’s a record, or it smashes a record, to be very precise,” Armel Castellan, meteorologist at Environment Canada, told AFP on Thursday, December 2.
Five months after the historic “heat dome” that smothered Canada’s Great West, mercury hits a… https://t.co/4O9hvPw9CA
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On December 3, 1982, Canada had previously recorded a temperature of 22.5 degrees in Hamilton, Ontario, according to this expert.
Penticton, which has a population of around 33,000, is a few hundred kilometers from Lytton, a community 250 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, which at the end of June set the historic temperature record in Canada with 49.6 degrees Celsius and was 90% destroyed by a wildfire.
+11 degrees compared to 2012
In Penticton, “the absolute record was 11.2 in 2012, yesterday the high was 22.5, so it sure is a record,” Gregory Yang, meteorologist, told AFP Environment Canada.
This region of interior British Columbia is also the one suffering the effects of the “historic” heat dome this summer that killed more than 500 people, followed by major fires.
“Since September we’ve been getting a lot, a lot of heat from the subtropics,” Armel Castellan explained, calling the number achieved “very, very impressive for any day in December and any time of the country”.
An “atmospheric flow” has been rolling across southwest British Columbia for about a week, “the third of three in the past week,” he said.
Heavy rains have caused catastrophic flooding in the province since mid-November, events authorities have linked to the effects of climate change.
Recent studies show the direct responsibility of climate change for certain heat waves. For example, the exceptional heatwave in Canada in June 2021, with temperatures approaching 50°C, would have been “nearly impossible” without the warming, according to scientists at World Weather Attribution.
See also on The HuffPost: In Canada, several western cities have been paralyzed by torrential rains
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