It’s never just summer anymore

Written by News Roundup on July 12, 2024. Posted in Current News

The weather forecast as of the time of writing is for a blast of hot weather along the US west coast, possibly hot enough not to be mere weather but you-know-what.

Alas for Canada we’ve had to make do with mere weather: the Weather Network threatened highs of 35°C for Canada’s national capital during the week of June 17, several degrees above what really happened.

And as of June 26, the prediction for the approaching Canada Day weekend included a single-digit overnight low (9C) for June 27-28 and on the actual Canada Day (July 1, and yes it used to be Dominion Day and still should be) a high of 24 and a low of 14.

And in case you all live in the United States of Imperial, that would be 75 and 57, with that 9C figure working out to 48. Just weather, mind you. Including that “A ~5am temp of 6.5°C brought #Ottawa within 0.4°C of the lowest ever recorded on June 28th.” Some all-time deathly heat wave this one’s turning into.

As the Weather Network put it sourly on June 26:

“A lack of extreme warmth will be a key theme this holiday weekend… The Canada Day long weekend will be as changeable as spring, but with more comfortable temperatures for all.”

Of course if you’re looking for it you can find it. Ottawa Weather Records noted on June 23, as the heat broke, that:

“After 4 consecutive June days with maximum humidex ≥35 in #Ottawa, the maximum humidex was only 24.9 Friday. We made it to 4th place, only 2 days behind the record.”

Oooh, scary, kids? Not really. And not only because the record was set decades ago. Because the stretch was four days, tied with a whole bunch of other years, and the record is six. Plus what’s “humidex” anyway, other than a method for making it seem hotter than it is? (Ottawa temperature records go back into the 1870s; humidex ones only to 1952.)

If the climate crisis is hard to find, don’t worry. Attribution science exists precisely to find it whenever, wherever, right away, and bypass all that tedious science where they check hypotheses. As a Canadian Press story celebrated, “When heat waves strike, Environment Canada can link it to climate change – fast”. Er, that should be quickly, the adverb, not fast the adjective meaning permanently attached. Then again the way the science works, maybe fast is appropriate after all.

And never mind all that silly journalistic skepticism of yore, let alone the idea that scientific analysis is aimed at finding the truth. We’re doing activism now. As that story says toward the end:

“Rapid attribution tools are best used as a call to action, said Rachel White, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia, who uses climate models to study extreme weather events.”

Curiously, this call to action was written after the hot weather had gone away to be replaced by some totally irrelevant cold weather. But climate change lingers on because climate change:

“While the unusually high temperatures have now relented, fundamental questions remain: just how much more likely was that heat wave because of climate change?

And how much worse did it get because of it? Within a few days, researchers at Environment and Climate Change Canada are expected to have the results. The data would mark the public debut of Canada’s new rapid extreme weather event attribution pilot program.

Environment Canada will be able to say, within about a week of the end of a heat wave, whether and to what extent climate change made it more likely or intense. Environment and Climate Change Canada is believed to be one of the first government offices in the world to publicly roll out such a tool and automatically apply it to heat waves across large parts of the country.”

Whatever do you suppose the finding will be? Right. Guilty as charged:

“Climate scientists have long detailed how planet-warming emissions are making weather extremes – from heat waves to heavy rainfall – more likely and severe across Canada.

Temperatures that would have been virtually impossible without burning fossil fuels are becoming the new extreme, scientists say, while extremes are becoming the new unusual.”

So scientists already know what scientists won’t know for a week. But the thing is, we must run in circles scream and shout NOW NOW NOW:

“Studies of those specific heat waves or floods can, however, take months to make it into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. By then, decisionmakers may have debated how to rebuild or where to relocate after a devastating flood, for example, without a clear indication of climate change’s role. Public attention and the news cycle has shifted elsewhere.”

If only. But now, hooray:

“Rapid studies, popularized over the past decade by trailblazing international research groups, look to inject climate science into the discussion when it’s most relevant.”

Just like this news story. And countless others. Thus Kate Allen, “Climate Change Reporter”, informs readers of the Toronto Star:

“As the GTA and much of Eastern Canada swelters through a third straight day of extreme heat, a few questions reliably pop up: Is the splashpad open? What’s the least sweaty way to get to work?

How much ice cream is reasonable for a single adult to consume over a 24-hour period? And then the big one, the one that rattles around so often these days: is this climate change?

A new, prototype rapid extreme weather attribution system piloted by Environment and Climate Change Canada will be getting a workout in the coming days as it processes reams of data to identify the fingerprint of human-induced warming in the current heat wave.

The team joins a growing group racing to identify the involvement of climate change in the immediate aftermath of extreme weather, from floods to wildfires to droughts. While these programs are run by research scientists, their primary audience is not academics: it’s you, the public. “Attribution science” is intended to break through the disconnect between the global, gradual shifts of climate change and our lived reality on the ground.”

Oh, would that be the one where we had some heat in midsummer then it cooled off? What does attribution science make of lows of 9 or 14? Not much, apparently:

“Event attribution ‘can help people understand how climate change is impacting us here in Canada,’ said Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a Toronto-based research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada’s climate research division.

‘If we talk about global temperature increases, it can seem a bit disconnected from our everyday lives. But it’s definitely not — we are feeling the effects of climate change, and through extreme events like this, this is a way to understand that.’

Meteorologists on Wednesday warned that this week’s heat wave is very rare for so early in the summer, and risks breaking multiple records. It’s also very dangerous.”

Other outlets warned us that it was hot in Saudi Arabia and that elderly people marching long distances in the blazing sun during a summer haj were having health problems. And you’ll never guess:

“The Hajj follows a lunar calendar so it will not always occur during such heat. Still, one study shows Saudi Arabia is heating up much more quickly than other parts of the Northern Hemisphere.”

Indeed, due to runaway global heating breakdown, Saudi Arabia recorded its highest-ever temperature in Jeddah in… um… 2010. (At the airport, of course.) Unless it was in Rafha in 2006. However such things are just weather.

P.S. Pass the noose, because that CP story also said “More broadly, attribution science has also bolstered efforts to hold big emitters, such as oil companies, responsible for the casualties and costs of specific climate-fuelled weather extremes.”

See more here Climate Discussion

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