Ten countries set or matched national monthly high temperature marks last year.
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A thermometer shows a temperature of 130° Fahrenheit (54° Celsius)
at the Furnace Creek Visitor's Center at Death Valley National Park
in California on June 17, 2021.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
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The Guardian reports that 10 countries—Canada, Dominica, Italy, Morocco, Oman, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—set or matched their national monthly high temperature records last year.
"Climate change is real and it's now," tweeted Catherine McKenna, founder of Climate and Nature Solutions and a former Canadian environment and climate change minister.
McKenna noted the numerous Canadian temperature records that were shattered last year, including in Lytton, British Columbia, where the mercury soared to 49.6°C, or 121.3°F, in late June.
Ten national temperature records were broken or equalled in 2021, including Lytton, BC where the temperature reached 49.6 degrees.According to The Guardian:
Climate change is real and it's now. https://t.co/u6Q1IGrHN2
— Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna) January 7, 2022
A few continental and planetary records fell too: Africa had its warmest June and September ever. August brought 48.8°C (119.8°F) in Syracuse, Italy, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe. July had already brought 54.4°C (130°F) in Furnace Creek in the U.S. Death Valley—the highest reliably recorded temperature on Earth."You can certainly see the effect of climate change in our weather in Kenya, and globally," Patricia Nying'uro of the Kenyan Meteorological Department and co-founder of Climate Without Borders—an international group of broadcast meteorologists and weather presenters—told the paper.
"We're just putting together the data for 2021, but we think we will have seen an annual temperature which is 2.1°C higher than normal for some parts of the country," she added. "The shifts are very noticeable, from one extreme to another in a very short space of time."
| Ten national temperature records were broken or equalled in 2021, including the highest ever reliably measured on Earth  |
Guardian graphic. Source: Maximiliano Herrero |
"Of course 2021 was full of extreme events," Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks extreme weather around the world, told The Guardian. "But if I have to name one, I'll name what struck every single climatologist and meteorologist in the world... the mother of all heatwaves."
"The magnitude of this event surpassed anything I have seen after a life of researching extreme events in all modern world climatic history in the past couple of centuries," he said.
Climate scientists say such record-breaking heatwaves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the coming decades.
"We must expect extreme event records to be broken - not just by small margins, but quite often by very large ones" says climate scientist Professor Rowan Sutton."We must expect extreme event records to be broken," Rowan Sutton of the National Center for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading in England warned last July, "not just by small margins but quite often by very large ones."
We face a huge challenge to improve preparedness, build resilience and adapt society.https://t.co/hJCcqmSaVb
— National Centre for Atmospheric Science (@AtmosScience) July 27, 2021
Links
- 'This Is the Climate Emergency': Dozens of Sudden Deaths Reported as Canada Heat Hits Record 121°F
- ‘Record-shattering’ heat becoming much more likely, says climate study
- Extreme temperatures kill 5 million people a year with heat-related deaths rising, study finds
- World ‘must step up preparations for extreme heat’
- Climate crisis: recent European droughts 'worst in 2,000 years'
- Climate crisis: record ocean heat in 2020 supercharged extreme weather
- Climate change made Siberian heatwave 600 times more likely – study
- Climate Without Borders
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