Historic Northwest Heat Wave Would Have Been “Nearly Impossible” Without Human-Made Climate Crisis, Study Finds

(CNN) – Hundreds of dead in a historic heat wave. A canadian town reduced to ashes. Lack of water. Animals competing For the food. Guilty? Humans, according to climate change scientists.

The heat wave unprecedented experience in the Pacific Northwest in late June “would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change,” according to an analysis by more than two dozen scientists from World Weather Attribution.

All extreme heat episodes bear the traces of climate change, the authors wrote, but the unprecedented heat of late June, which set historic records in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, was made possible primarily by warming caused by the fossil fuel emissions, the analysis concluded.

Although the temperatures were “far outside the range of temperatures observed in the past,” leaving little to compare, the scientists determined that the late June heat wave was 150 times more likely due to climate change.

A decade ago, researchers would have been hesitant to pinpoint climate change as the cause of a particular event.

Now, with the help of powerful computer models, researchers can use decades of observed temperatures to quickly determine what role global warming played.

“Our results are a strong warning: the rapid warming of the climate is taking us into uncharted territory that has major consequences for health, well-being and livelihoods,” the authors wrote.

The late June heat episode “raises serious questions about whether we really understand how climate change is making heat waves hotter and deadlier,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

A mass casualty event

Oregon officials said Wednesday that the heat wave was a “mass casualty event” consistent with “worst weather patterns.” State authorities have reported 116 deaths in Oregon from the heat wave, and at least 57 more in Washington state.

“The unprecedented heat dome that settled over the region for nearly five days between June 25 and June 30 was a mass casualty event,” according to Multnomah County, where the city of Portland is located.

On June 28 alone, the county medical examiner experienced four times the usual death toll, according to the county.

“The number of people and infrastructure damaged by this event is consistent with the worst climate models for the Pacific Northwest and predicts that the worst is yet to come if aggressive measures are not taken globally to stop the use of fossil fuels.” said John Wasiutynski, Multnomah County sustainability director, in a statement.

Hundreds of people were also reported to have died from the relentless heat in British Columbia, which set Canada’s all-time record for the highest temperature of all time – 49.6 ° C in the town of Lytton, which was left almost completely destroyed by a forest fire a few days later.

Lytton Mayor Jan Polderman told CNN-affiliated CTV News that within minutes on Wednesday “there was fire everywhere,” leaving no time to knock on doors and tell people that evacuate.

Also problems with the rains

In California, rainfall is at its lowest, raising concerns about a devastating wildfire season.

On June 30, when the state ended its rainy year, California recorded a state average of just 59.9 centimeters of rainfall, marking its driest year since records began in 1895. Total rainfall is less than half, 49%, of the state’s typical annual accumulation, which is measured from the beginning of July to the end of June of each year.

Jan Null, a former meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the San Francisco Bay area, first reported this year’s record rainfall on Wednesday, citing data from the Western Region Climate Center.

Benjamin Hatchett, a climatologist at the center, noted that the 2020-2021 period was not only the driest rainy year in the state, but also the second warmest year on record, making the situation “urgent.” .

“We get a large proportion of our water from runoff that snowmelt provides,” Hatchett told CNN.

And he added that exceptional conditions have also predisposed much of the state to wildfires.

“Basically every part of California is ready to burn right now,” he said. “All it takes is one mistake.”

Vast swaths of the west remain mired in a historic and unforgiving drought, the worst in the region in at least 20 years. Drought conditions as of Thursday broadened and worsened in the western region, especially the Pacific Northwest, after another week of hot and dry weather, according to the United States Drought Monitor.

“Extreme” and “exceptional” drought

More than 93% of the west is in a drought situation, the highest on record, with almost 60% in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the two most severe categories. There are five completely dry states: California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and North Dakota.

The exceptional drought in Oregon has widened, according to the US Drought Monitor, which said current conditions in the state are among the driest since the late 1800s. In Washington, “grassland and rangeland conditions are much worse this year compared to every other year this century.”

Data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shows that the state is far outpacing the disastrous 2020 fire year in both the number of wildfires and the ground burned. As of July 4, more than 114 square miles had been burned across the state, an area more than double the number at the same time last year, when California recorded the worst fire season in its history.

Peter Fickenscher, a hydrologist with the California-Nevada National Weather Service River Forecast Center, told CNN that the fact that the state is experiencing a second year in a row of extremely dry conditions has made the situation “much more dire” and warned that if it does not receive significant rainfall in the next year, it will be necessary to take “extreme measures” to conserve water.

CNN’s Brisa Colon, Hannah Gard and Taylor Ward contributed to this report.