Researchers at Columbia University have been able to pin the blame for the 2021 heat dome squarely on climate change.
The deadly heat wave that struck Western Canada in 2021 would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate warming, a new study has found.
Temperatures in the region reached extraordinary highs. In Lytton, B.C., after three consecutive record-setting days, the mercury topped out at 49.6 C on June 29 — the highest temperature yet recorded in Canada. But researchers at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University have been able to pin the blame for the 2021 heat dome squarely on climate change.pulled together climate data from as far back as the 1950s along with daily weather data from the weeks before, during and after the heat wave.
It’s been well established by climate scientists that there has been an upward trend in temperature — human-induced climate warming — over the past several decades. But that, by itself, is not enough to explain the extreme heat events of 2021. This happened in various places across the globe. Not only were there heat waves in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest, but there were heat waves tied to the same mechanism in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, western Russia and northwest Siberia at the same time.
“That is definitely part of the climate-change signal,” says Mingfang Ting, professor at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University and a co-author of the research. “And because of that, once you have the right conditions, the start of an extreme heat event like that, then it starts to self-amplify through this land-atmosphere feedback.”
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