Weather: Extreme heat wave in western Canada and the United States

Western Canada and Northwest United States Suffer from an intense heat wave. In the village of Lytton in the Canadian province British Columbia Temperatures of 46.1 degrees Celsius were measured on Sunday. This is the highest temperature Canada Registered as announced by the country’s Ministry of Environment.

It measured over 40 degrees over the weekend across British Columbia. The first recorded temperature in Canada was 45 degrees Celsius and in July 1937 in two cities in the province of Saskatchewan.

The Department of the Environment has issued warnings for British Columbia and the province of Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. It said the heat would last throughout the week. The temperature will be 10 to 15 degrees above normal.

“Dangerous heat wave”

The U.S. National Weather Service issued a similar warning for the “dangerous heat wave” in the northwestern states Washington And Oregon. Seattle and Portland cities expected record values ​​on Monday. The weather service in the city of Spokane, Washington, announced record temperatures on Sunday. A temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit corresponds to values ​​of about 38 degrees Celsius.

The heat wave is particularly dangerous because it affects such a large area of ​​the United States and will last a long time. In many places it should not be colder than 20 degrees Celsius even at night. This is a huge burden on the health of the elderly and the sick.

The heat also increases Wildfire risk Hand in hand. Particularly hot thunderstorms, in which no significant amount of rain falls, can trigger new fires. There have already been fires in several states.

The heat wave is caused by the current high pressure area spread across the western United States. However, scientists have no doubt: it is a man-made climate change that often causes extreme weather events.

This approach is also supported by the findings of a new study by the University of Texas A&M and other research institutes: Thus, the fact that storms and thunderstorms in large plains have increased in frequency and intensity in recent years is clearly related to climate change. The results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.