Canada, US Heat Wave "On Steroids" Due To Climate Change: Experts

The US states of Washington and Oregon, as well as British Columbia in Canada, boiled this week in all-time high temperatures that have caused dozens of deaths.

The western United States and Canada would likely have experienced a heat wave in the past week even without climate change. But the scale and severity of the record-breaking temperatures were undoubtedly multiplied by the changes to our atmosphere, experts say. The US states of Washington and Oregon, as well as British Columbia in Canada, boiled this week in all-time high temperatures that have caused dozens of deaths. "This is one of the most extreme heat waves that we have seen on Earth, in many years, anywhere, in terms of the deviation from the typical conditions in this particular part of the world," said Daniel Swain, a climate expert at UCLA, noting that temperature records are rarely broken by "more than a degree."  "In this case, those records were obliterated," he said. "It's really the magnitude and the persistence of this one that is just genuinely shocking."