By Adam Berls

heat wave

Expect more prolonged heat this summer

Jul 6, 2023 | 2:29 PM

PRINCE GEORGE — Canada is in the middle of a heat wave right now, with numerous temperature records being broken right across the country. In B.C., above average temperatures are being seen pretty much everywhere including the North.

“The most intense anomalies, if you will, in the in terms of the ridge compared to the normal temperatures is really in the north, and even into the Yukon.” – Philippe-Alain Bergeron, Meteorologist, Environment & Climate Change Canada

As opposed to the 2021 heat dome event, which brought scorching heat in a short period of time, we are seeing more prolonged heat this summer.

Dr. Joseph Shea is an associate professor of environmental geomatics at UNBC and says that more record-breaking temperatures like we saw on Tuesday are becoming a regular occurence.

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It is becoming more common. And the reason it’s becoming more common is something that’s been talked about for decades now. This is one of the expected outcomes of, you know, pushing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We know that things are going to warm up. So it’s expected that we’re going to be breaking records and continually breaking records for the foreseeable future until we actually manage to bring our emissions down.” – Dr. Joseph Shea, Associate Professor of Environmental Geomatics, UNBC

When the Earth’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to the hottest day in 44 years, it happened earlier than what would be expected.

The planet as a whole usually hits its highest temperature in sort of mid-late July. And so what I’m expecting to see is this sort of global record temperature to keep going up as we get into July. It’ll still increase unless something dramatic happens. But we don’t we don’t see anything, any signs that would point to that happening. We’ll keep breaking this global temperature record this year and possibly next year as well, since we’re entering into an El Nino phase, which is a abnormally warm Pacific Sea surface temperatures.” – Dr. Joseph Shea, Associate Professor of Environmental Geomatics, UNBC

On Tuesday, the globe’s average temperature reached 17.18 degrees celcius, breaking Monday’s previous record of 17.01 degrees celsius. The average high for Prince George on July 6, 21.5 degrees, the forecasted high 28.

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Twitter: @AdamBerls

Email: Adam.Berls@pattisonmedia.com