Lytton: the hottest city in the world
CANADA – The world is so different that people sleep and wake up at different times due to changing time zones, something we cannot change. Some of these things are so unique that people keep wondering about the circumstances behind them.
A few days ago, the city of Lytton, British Columbia, Canada officially became the hottest city in the world. On Monday, temperatures were at 47.9C [118F] and on Tuesday, it recorded 49.6 ° C, even beating Las Vegas by far.
The city is located at 59 ° north latitude like London, UK and ideally the city shouldn’t be hot. Initially, Seattle was the hottest city in the world at 108F, but that keeps changing with some US cities overtaking it.
The heat was accompanied by a thunderstorm that had been on for a long time. After centuries of burning fossil fuels and decades of warnings from scientists, it’s time to say it: we are in a climate emergency, argues Eric Holthaus, meteorologist, author of The Future Earth and founder of Currently , a meteorological service built for the climate emergency
“It was the mountains of the Pacific Coast that played a vital and unique role in making this particular heat wave possible. Climate change is not only warming the surface of the planet, it is warming the entire troposphere of Earth – the lowest layer of the atmosphere where all of our weather occurs, ”he notes.
“This is especially true in mountainous areas, where temperatures rise even faster than elsewhere. When snow and ice recede or even disappear from mountains, bare ground can warm without hindrance. A 2015 study reported revealed that mountainous areas above 2,000 meters heat up about 75% faster than places at lower elevations. ”
Downstream from Lytton, flood warnings are now in effect for the river valleys, as the sudden melting of snow and ice created a torrent of flowing water. At the moment, Canada’s glaciers are melting so fast that they are flooding homes under clear skies, he said, as quoted by the Guardian.
These are young people braving heatstroke to demand climate action from a president who has promised it to them. It is the anguish of not knowing when or where the next heatwave will be, but of knowing that it is coming. It’s about surviving a society where decades of racial segregation means neighborhoods marked in red are 15 degrees warmer than others.
As temperatures have dropped in Seattle and Portland, this heat wave continues to rage for residents of eastern Washington. Farm workers in the Yakima Valley will face temperatures above 100 ° F (38 ° C) until at least Monday – six more days. In parts of Pakistan and along the shores of the Persian Gulf, heat waves are already reaching temperatures too high for even healthy people to survive outdoors.
If climate is what defines a place – the shape and character of our neighborhoods, the types of plants and animals that live nearby, the activities we can enjoy – then we are changing what makes us.
“It’s warmer in parts of western Canada than in Dubai,” David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada, said in an interview with CTV. “I mean, it’s just not something that looks Canadian.”
The most shocking part is that all of this is happening with just two degrees Fahrenheit of global warming in the 150 years since we started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. On our current course, we are heading for another three to five degree warming in half that time.
At this point, building a world that can prosper will require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the lead group world of climate scientists.
Climate change isn’t just something that happens, it’s a series of choices made by real people who share this planet with us. Indigenous resistance to an extraction-based economy must be intensified and combined with climate remedies for the people and places most affected.
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