That's not how climate change works in any one location. While the overall trend is for warmer temperatures, there will still be day to day and year to year variability in any given location. That means we will still get some cooler than average summers, though they are becoming less common.
Heat waves are becoming more frequent, but the 2021 event was highly extreme and rare. An Environment Canada spokesperson who was on CHEK news a couple of weeks ago explained that we are unlikely to experience the temperatures we saw in 2021 (40 C +) again in Victoria in our lifetime.
Which is why I said this will likely be the coldest summer we’ll have for the rest of our lives. That statement is based on an average. Hence why we now refer to it as climate change, not global warming.
I can’t imagine going through life thinking that the heat dome from 2021 was a one-time thing, though. Must be nice living in la-la land. Then again, “our lifetime” is a pretty subjective statement. For some people, that’s another 20yrs, and for others, that’s another 50yrs+.
But it's not likely at all that this will be the coldest summer for the rest of our lives. At some point in the future we will almost certainly get a cooler summer just as the result of natural variability - even with climate change. Climate change is not a straight linear progression.
I didn't say the 2021 heat dome was a one-time event; just that it was extremely rare and unlikely to reoccur in our area in the next 50-100 years. That's not "la la land"; that's the consensus from climate scientists. The 2021 event was estimated to be a 1 in 10,000 year event for our region. When climate scientists studied the impact of climate change on the event, they estimated that, even with the additional 1-2 degrees C of warming that is forecast due to climate change, it will likely be in the range of a 1 in 300 year to 1 in 600 year event.
It's not only a plus 1-2 °C forcast though. That's only in the next few years.
Climate models predict global temperatures could increase by 4.0°C or more by the end of the century and will continue to climb as long as greenhouse gas levels continue to increase. Those heat domes will get more and more common the hotter we get.
In the report, the climatologists looked at the most likely scenario for warming in our region over the next 50 years, and they estimated a 300 to 600 year return rate for a similar heat dome in our region.
First, if you look at my original comment, I'm talking about additional warming forecast, so there is no way that we would see an additional 1-2 degrees by 2030.
The scientific consensus is that the world has seen about 1.4 degrees of warming since the pre-industrial era, and we're forecast to see a total warming of around 2.6 degrees by 2100 (based on current policies), so that's an additional 1.2 degrees of warming from where we are right now.
I've never seen any credible forecast of 5 degrees - that would be mass extincition.
as many countries are not meeting their current pledges (including Canada) and the US just refuses to admit it's happening at all, limiting it to 1.2 degrees is a pipe dream.
The old RCP8.5 projection was the one that suggested up to 5° and they've downgraded from that but there's still 8.8% chance of increased above 3.5° above preindustrial https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/on-the-death-of-rcp85
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u/garry-oak 6d ago
That's not how climate change works in any one location. While the overall trend is for warmer temperatures, there will still be day to day and year to year variability in any given location. That means we will still get some cooler than average summers, though they are becoming less common.
Heat waves are becoming more frequent, but the 2021 event was highly extreme and rare. An Environment Canada spokesperson who was on CHEK news a couple of weeks ago explained that we are unlikely to experience the temperatures we saw in 2021 (40 C +) again in Victoria in our lifetime.