Alberta’s summer is sizzling, folks, with temperatures soaring to record-breaking highs.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), our province set a whopping 66 daily temperature records between July 8 – 10.
And it seems the mercury isn’t ready to take a break. Environment Canada issued heat warnings across Alberta for the next 8 -10 days.
But it’s not just our Wild Rose Country feeling the heat.
The whole world is breaking a sweat, with temperatures worldwide clocking in at 1.64 C warmer than pre-industrial averages for 12 consecutive months.
For those of you who might be wondering, ‘pre-industrial’ refers to the time before we started burning coal, gas, and oil on a large scale, with temperature referenced as a baseline from 1850 to 1900..
Thirteen Record-Breaking Months
According to the Europe-based Copernicus Climate Change Service, the highest temperatures ever recorded on this planet were during the 12 months between July 2023 and June 2024.
“June marks the 13th consecutive month of record-breaking global temperatures, and the 12th in a row above 1.5°C with respect to pre-industrial,” said Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), in a media release.
“This is more than a statistical oddity, and it highlights a large and continuing shift in our climate.”
In simpler terms, it’s time to sit up and take notice.
June 2024 was hotter than any other June on record, and our oceans weren’t spared either. The average sea surface temperature for June 2024 soared higher than ever recorded, at 20.85°C.
Back in 2015, 195 nations pledged to limit global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. There is still time, but if the latest climate data is any indication, it will take more than empty promises and token efforts.
Scientists fear that if this heating trend continues, some human populations and ecosystems will be pushed closer to the tipping point.
“Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm. This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans,” Buontempo said.
A Tipping Point
The rising temperatures over the past 12 months have resulted in more severe weather events and drought conditions worldwide.
Scientists fear that if this heating trend continues, some human populations and ecosystems will be pushed closer to the tipping point.
What are climate tipping points? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), tipping points are ‘critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible.’
Aditi Mukherji, a co-author of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, likens 1 C of global heating to a mild fever and 1.5 C to a medium-to-high-grade fever.
“Now imagine a human body with [that] temperature for years. Will that person function normally anymore?” Mukherji said in a story first published by The Guardian. “That’s currently our Earth system. It is a crisis.”
Mukherji also reiterated, “We know that extreme events increase with every increment of global warming – and at 1.5C, we witnessed some of the hottest extremes this year.”
Alberta Records
Closer to home, many parts of Alberta are feeling the heat again this summer.
Edmonton tied its July 9 heat record of 34.1 C (records have been kept in the capital city region since 1880).
During the recent hot spell, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat hit 36 C and 37 C, respectively.
With this heat comes increased pressure on our province’s already stressed water resources. As veteran Alberta wildlife biologist Lorne Fitch recently pointed out, “Climate change isn’t our future; it is our present.”
“Declining river flows, persistent drought, increased temperatures, heat domes, greater evaporation and more wicked weather events signal our world has changed and has done so irrevocably. The frontier of easy, reliable, abundant and engineered water is at an end,” Fitch wrote in a recent Edmonton Journal column.
The last few weeks of sweltering heat are a stark reminder of what’s to come unless we take action to limit heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.
It’s 2024, and we have already hit the 1.5-degree mark for 12 straight months. At this rate, it’s scary to imagine what things will be like in 2100.
A recent survey of hundreds of the Nobel-prize-winning IPCC authors found that three out of four expect the planet to heat by at least 2.5 C by 2100, with about half of the scientists expecting temperatures above 3C.
Yikes!
The temperature increments might sound small, but anything above 1.5 C will result in widespread human suffering and “semi-dystopian” futures. Let’s not let that be the legacy we leave for our kids.
