An unparalleled heat wave that paralyzed British Columbia last week was made 150 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, an international team of researchers said Wednesday.
A heat dome engulfing the 91原创 Northwest from Oregon to B.C. spiked temperatures over 40 C in many communities. The town of Lytton set an all-time Canada-wide temperature record at 49.6 C. A day later, a wildfire ripped through the village, killing at least two people.
Gonzales weather station in Victoria recorded an all-time-record high of 39.8 during the heat wave.
鈥淭he event was extremely rare. Our initial estimate is it was a one in a 1,000-year event in the present climate,鈥� said Faron Anslow, a Victoria-based climate scientist from the 91原创 Climate Impacts 颅Consortium who collaborated on the study with 25 other 颅scientists through the World Weather Attribution.
The team analyzed a vast quantity of historical temperature data going back to the 1800s. Then they ran climate models through over 4,000 simulations, tracing the likelihood of such an extreme event under different emission scenarios.
In the end, the study found the heat wave would have been 鈥渧irtually impossible without human-caused climate change.鈥�
Humans have already pumped enough carbon into the atmosphere to warm the planet by 1.2 C since the Industrial Revolution, according to the World Meteorological Agency. What happens in the coming decades depends on how fast the world鈥檚 economy moves away from fossil fuels and retains carbon-sucking ecosystems.
Under worst-case emission scenarios, the study found climate warming would lead to similar events every five to 10 years by the 2040s, when the world is expected to have 颅undergone 2 C of human-induced warming. But even under a less extreme scenario, Anslow said the results were 鈥減retty similar.鈥�
鈥淏y the middle part of the century, we鈥檙e going to start to see these type of events,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 think we鈥檇 be here right now.鈥�
So far, the B.C. Coroners Service has reported 579 more deaths across the province when compared to the five-year average over the same period.
Then there were the billion sea creatures thought to have baked to death along B.C.鈥檚 coast, and the yet-to-be-tallied crop failures that have left fruit shrivelled on trees and vines.
It鈥檚 that devastating climate fallout Anslow and his colleagues are warning about. 鈥淚s there something that the models don鈥檛 capture well? Or is there something fundamentally different with climate when it reaches a certain temperature? We don鈥檛 have those answers yet.鈥�
By all indications, the heat wave was an exceedingly rare weather event, he said.
鈥淭here鈥檚 nothing about having an event like this that makes it more likely tomorrow,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he odds still are one in a 1,000 for any given year, until we know otherwise But certainly, as we get out into the 2040s, we鈥檒l very likely be seeing these 颅happening again.鈥�
Co-author Kristi Ebi of the University of Washington said heat waves will be a major public health issue as climate change continues. The toll includes health problems and deaths directly related to heat as well as other conditions such as heart problems or respiratory diseases that are worsened by it.
鈥淎lmost all of the deaths are preventable,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 need to die in heat waves.
鈥淭he possibilities for prevention are critically important to address.鈥�
The study brought together 27 scientists from eight countries. Although it has not yet been published, the authors say it will be submitted for peer review and publication in the near future. Scientists used to be reluctant to link climate change with any specific weather event, that has begun to change.
鈥� With The 91原创 Press
