The record for the highest temperature in Canada has been broken again. The village of Lytton in British Columbia reached a new national high of 49.6C on Tuesday, a day after it had set a record of 47.9C.
This record even beats the highest temperature for Europe or South America and was a new high for anywhere in world above 45 degrees north. Most national records are broken only by fractions of a degree but this one smashed the historical record in Canada by 4.6C.
The intense heatwave in western Canada, as well as the US northwest, has been devastating. The BBC reported that dozens of people have died in Canada from the heat, and police in Vancouver have responded to more than 130 sudden heat-related deaths since last Friday, mostly elderly people or those with an existing condition. People are being urged to seek refuge in air-conditioned buildings. To add to this apocalyptic scene, a plague of grasshoppers has spread across a large part of the western US in the heat and a long-running drought.
The heatwave in the Pacific Northwest of North America is no isolated event. Unusually high temperatures are extending across north Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, eastern Europe, Iran and the northwestern Indian sub-continent. Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, set a new national June record of 38.9C on Monday. A heatwave is intensifying in the Middle East with 49.9C at al-Qaysumah, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. And in the southern hemisphere, a heatwave struck in winter in Mozambique, where a near record temperature of 36.4C was set at Skukuza on Tuesday.
The heat so early in the summer season comes against a background of rising world temperatures. “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as greenhouse gas concentrations lead to a rise in global temperatures,” the World Meteorological Association announced. “They are starting earlier and ending later and are taking an increasing toll on human health and health systems.”
