Front Burner - Heat waves and climate change in action

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

An extreme heat wave has taken over Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest this week. Today on Front Burner, climate journalist Eric Holthaus on why he thinks this weather is a clear call to action on the climate emergency.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So if you're driving into Lytton, a small village in BC's interior, you will literally pass a sign on the side of the highway that says Canada's Hotspot. And this week, it really lived up to its name. By the end of the day on Tuesday, for the third day in a row,

the town broke the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada, surpassing a whopping 49 degrees Celsius. That's hotter than the hottest temperature ever recorded in Las Vegas. Abbotsford, Kamloops, Kelowna have all set all-time highs. In Alberta, Calgary and Edmonton are beginning to face the brunt of this heatwave that has extended to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Today, what all this tells us about climate change. Eric Holthaus is a climate journalist and founder of a free weather service called Currently.

He's been tracking this heat wave and its wider implications. Hey, Eric, thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right, so you and I are talking on Tuesday, early afternoon, and as of right now, Lytton has this week broken the record for hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada twice. The first time by 1.6 degrees and the second time by another degree. It's possible that it does it again today. And so how significant is that to you? It's just kind of shocking. You know, I was just looking at these numbers again. And Lytton is about the same latitude as London, England.

And these are temperatures that just shouldn't exist in this part of the world. You know, 50 degrees north latitude. That's a whole almost quarter of a planet away from Las Vegas where those same temperatures were reached. You know, these are some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded in populated places on Earth. You know, there are not too many places in the world that ever get this hot. And one of them now is this small town in B.C. The heat wave smashed dozens of records in B.C. over the weekend. This Abbotsford raspberry farm a minute

by minute hundreds of thousands of dollars could be just evaporating into the sky this is unusual weather for this part of canada and it's being made worse by the fact that 60 of bc residents don't have air conditioning at home right now health officials say the risk of extreme heat exposure is higher than COVID-19. Do you think it's possible, too, that it could get even hotter this summer? Because we're just at the beginning of the summer, right? Yeah, maybe. I think today, Tuesday, whatever the temperature is in Lytton today will be kind of the benchmark in Canada for a long time to come, I think.

Hopefully forever. you know, you never know. But there's a chance that Lytton could hit, you know, 49 or maybe even 50 degrees today, because the conditions have just kind of settled in. The atmosphere above the mountains in BC have warmed up enough over the last couple of days that it won't take much more to break that record. Now, you know, as I'm looking at the numbers this morning, several places in BC have started out about a degree warmer than they were this time yesterday. So, you know, if you add a degree again to that record, that's 49. And it's just shocking to think that that's three, more than three degrees

above the previous all-time Canada record. I wonder if you could elaborate for me on what is actually going on here. So I hear the term heat dome being used to describe this a lot. An unusually strong ridge of high pressure bubbled up over the province on Friday, creating a heat dome. And that dome is trapping air that is hot and oppressive. And what does that mean exactly? What often happens in the summer, typically at further south latitudes, but we get a stagnant area of high pressure. And when high pressure settles in over the summer, it can kind of generate its own heat.

So this is dry sinking air, and air, as you learned probably in intro science classes decades ago, when dry air descends, it warms up. So we have sinking air that is heated as it falls to the surface. And that is how these warm temperatures are being manufactured right there in the mountain valleys. One of the compounding, I don't know how much time you have. I feel like I could talk all day about this because it's such an extreme event. But one of the compounding factors is that with climate change over the previous decades, we've been losing mountain snow and ice in BC, and that is allowing those mountain temperatures to increase at a faster rate than the global average. So it's easier for these mountain towns to hit these new records because there isn't enough snow there anymore to reflect the heat energy back out into space.

It sounds sort of like a pressure cooker in a way. Is that fair? Exactly like a pressure cooker. That's exactly the same physics that's happening is that when when the atmosphere is compressed, it heats up at a quicker rate. Talking about snow and ice melting, Pemberton, B.C. is now under an evacuation order due to possible flooding. Well, Mike Richman is the mayor of Pemberton. The alpine temperatures at night are not dropping or very little. So the snow melt is happening at such a rate during the day and it's carrying on during the night. So the rivers aren't being given a chance to rebuild capacity.

Other areas are on flood watch as well. to rebuild capacity. Other areas are on flood watch as well. And so I wonder if you could take me through some of the other consequences of the heat wave that isn't just it being crazy, crazy hot outside. Sure. Yeah. And this is what's happening again. You know, this is one of those aspects of climate change that we can actually watch happening in real time here. The snow and ice is melting up at the higher elevations. We have temperatures above zero degrees Celsius all the way up into 18 to 20,000 feet in altitude. You know, there were planes flying over BC this week taking these measurements. And that's just really unprecedented for this part of the world to see warm air that far up into the atmosphere. So some of the highest peaks, every high peak in the Canadian Rockies right now is melting up to the very summit. And it's happening all across

the Northwest and down in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state. They're having to close some roads because of flooding issues and in the temperatures at the sort of highest the road goes, almost 30 degrees Celsius, way up there, you know, where the ski lodge is and that sort of thing. So this is something that is from a new climate era, really, is what we're seeing. Yeah, it's extraordinary to listen to you talk about that.

You know, and I think maybe if you've ever been sort of on this terrain before, to think of it as hot as 30 degrees is quite something. I understand that wildfire risks are also up big time. Penticton's fire chief was speaking to the CBC about this. He's worried about how dry the forests are right now. The reality is that our bush is extremely ignitable right now. So, you know, jokingly, I said, don't even fart out there

because it is that severe. Yesterday we saw readings of the probability of ignition was 100%. That means a lot of times that ignition point won't actually ignite the fire, like a spark from a bike brake or a cigarette, but it will dwindle out and it will fizzle out. But today we're going to see exponential fire growth. Right, yeah, and this is another thing contributing to the heat is when the soil is dry, it heats up much quicker. It's

the same as you would see that if you were standing on hot concrete or asphalt, the temperature is a lot hotter than if you're standing in the grass or in the dirt. So in the same way, when the landscape turns into asphalt, basically during a drought, the temperature in the air can heat up a lot quicker. And that also reinforces the high pressure center, which makes the heat wave itself last longer and more intense. So it's just a feedback mechanism. This is something that scientists were kind of warning us about for decades, and now we can see it happening. There are two wildfires of note in B.C. currently burning out of control.

The Sparks Lake Fire, not far from Kamloops, has forced nine properties into evacuation alert. The George wildfire is currently burning roughly seven kilometers south of Lytton. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo, 50%.

That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. When it comes to the impact here, how do heat waves compare to other types of extreme weather, like hurricanes or floods, for example? The statistics, at least in the United States, are pretty clear on this, that heat waves are the deadliest form of extreme weather, more deadly on average each year than hurricanes and tornadoes combined. It's something that isn't as sexy, so it's not on the news as much. There's no sort of like storm chaser that

chases heat waves, really. You know, we don't see those images that are stark. And actually, if we do see any images, it's usually of like people playing in the fountains or in the swimming pools. And that is not really the lived reality. You know, if you're if you are experiencing this heat wave, people that I've been speaking with in the past few days, it's kind of fear and confusion and in not knowing when it's going to end or if this is going to be the new normal or um it's it's you know folks sharing um air conditioners with their friends and neighbors it's farm workers that are working in the fields that don't have uh breaks um there there's it affects all aspects of society um and it's so complex and complicated that it's difficult to wrap your

head around how much heat affects everyone. How often do you think we will see heat waves like this? You mentioned people worried, like, when's it going to end? When will the next one come? Sure. Yeah. I mean, our evidence is that heat waves are getting longer and more intense. On average, heat waves are about between three to five degrees Fahrenheit, so one to two degrees Celsius warmer than they were last century. And we can expect that to double in the next few decades. These heat waves, I would imagine, are not going to be going away really anytime soon within our lifetimes. But what I think is also good to remember is that these heat waves are not as severe as they could be, you know, with climate action. It's not locked in yet. There's still time to change things.

You mentioned before people, like, sharing air conditioners. I understand electricity use is going way up because of the heat wave, and obviously people are turning up their ACs. What effect do you think that that is having here? Utilities often use their oldest and dirtiest power plants during heat waves to make sure that they can cover that extra load so that there's no brownouts or blackouts. So that's happening again, and that can contribute to air pollution as well during these intense high pressure systems. Any air pollution will get trapped near the surface and makes it even harder for people with respiratory problems. So

that's a compounding problem. But also it makes sense to think about how we are using electricity. If we want to use an air conditioner, maybe we can wait and use a dishwasher or laundry later in the evening or overnight. Or if we have an electric car, make sure to charge it at night and not during the middle of the heat of the day to make sure that we can save energy for those air conditioners. In addition to that, do you think, are there better ways to be resilient to heat? islands. I think that there are some neighborhoods that are more strongly affected by heat waves than others because of, you know, housing policies in the past few decades that have promoted parklands based on race, honestly. There are some neighborhoods now that can be up to, you know, five to eight degrees Celsius warmer than other neighborhoods, depending on if they have a lot of parkland or not. So

trying to work towards equity is a good thing, I think, for every city to take into account. I've also seen, like, cities sort of painting roads and white sealant with, like, high reflexivity, this kind of stuff? Does that work? I think that roofs more so than roads because there won't be, you know, vehicle or pedestrian traffic on the roof. You know, having cool shaded roofs, having plants growing on your roofs, Having cool shaded roofs, having plants growing on your roofs, creating more park space that way vertically, I think is a great idea. And it will kind of restore some of the natural cooling ability that plants have. Okay. And obviously, you know, just sort of looping back to the comment you made earlier about climate change, the real solution here is to address the root cause of this, right? Right, of course. Yeah, of course, the goal should be kind of an emergency scale plan

to reduce carbon emissions, right? Like we have technologies that exist right now where we could do this. And in four or five years, if we wanted to, we could turn the entire country into zero carbon within 10 years, I think. It just requires funding and effort. Do you think that these days more people are making the connection between these heat waves that we're experiencing with the climate emergency? I would hope so. I mean, especially when we're seeing records that are broken by such a huge amount, it's really hard not to think about climate change. We've had more than 100 years of weather records in Canada, and to see a heat wave in a place that doesn't normally experience this kind of weather is really shocking. normally experience this kind of weather is really shocking. But it shouldn't really take extreme events to make that connection. I think that everyone has probably experienced climate change at this point. It's the year 2021. In our neighborhoods, in our backyards, and in what

our own memory is of our childhoods, for the weather to be changing at a geological rate in a span of a human lifetime is really something that, you know, our brains are not really built to handle that. So it takes a lot of reinforcement to really get it. Okay. Eric, thank you so much for this. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right, so an update for you since recording. Police in BC are also reporting a huge spike in sudden deaths since the heat wave began. Vancouver officers have responded to more than 65 deaths since Friday, with more casualties

being reported by the hour. On a typical day, they respond to between three and four sudden deaths throughout the city. This is happening in neighboring municipalities as well. RCMP and Burnaby have reported around 40 deaths so far and so has Surrey. Official causes of death have yet to be determined, but a statement said officers believe the majority of these sudden deaths are linked to the severe weather. Okay, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. We'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.