2021 heat dome fuelled by climate change, intensified wildfire risk: study
Global News
The study found the heat dome in June and July 2021 was 34 per cent larger and lasted 59 per cent longer than a similar event would have without climate change.
The deadly heat dome that smothered the Pacific Northwest in record-high temperatures for weeks in 2021 was made much worse by climate change, a new study suggests, and intensified that year’s North American wildfire season — a possible model of summers to come.
The study, published Monday in Communications Earth and Environment, concluded the heat dome in June and July 2021 was 34 per cent larger and lasted 59 per cent longer than a similar event would have without global warming. The sweltering temperatures across British Columbia, Washington and Oregon were subsequently linked to fires that accounted for up to one-third of the total area burned across the continent that year.
Researchers looking back on the past 40 years of data also found the 2021 heat dome was 36 per cent stronger and nearly 40 per cent larger than the next largest event of that kind, which took place in the summer of 2003.
“When we look at the trends … we find that these events are becoming more intense,” said Piyush Jain, the study’s lead author and a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and Natural Resources Canada.
The 2021 heat dome lasted 27 days, from June 18 to July 14, and was directly responsible for hundreds of deaths across western Canada and the United States, including more than 600 deaths in B.C. alone.
The town of Lytton, B.C., recorded the highest temperature ever seen in Canada in the middle of the phenomenon — 49.6 degrees Celsius — and was completely destroyed by a wildfire that began a day later.
Jain, who lives in Edmonton, said he also experienced unusually high temperatures that summer which told him he was experiencing an “extraordinary” climate event.
“We had a day where it was 38 degrees Celsius, which is the only time it’s been that hot the whole time I’ve lived here for 15 years now,” he said.
