Record high temperatures hit the top of the world

Climate change is hitting hard everywhere, and the heat wave that comes with it cannot be escaped – not even at the very top of the world. The city of Alert, in the Canadian Territory of Nunavut, has recently seen record high temperatures.

The town – which is the northern-most inhabited place on Earth, only 508 miles away from the North Pole – usually sees an average daily temperature of 3.4 C (38.1 F), with an average high of 6.1 C (43 F), in July. This year, the barometer rose up to a record high of 21 C (69.8 F) on July 14^th.

"That's what we're seeing more often," David Phillips, Environment Canada's chief climatologist, told CBC News. "It's not just half a degree or a 10th of a millimeter. It's like hitting a ball out of the ballpark. It is so different than what the previous record was." Though any one factor is hard to pinpoint, Phillips said: "With temperatures you've never seen before, you can't dismiss it as not having a climate change component."

Indeed, Canada has seen a higher rate of warming than in most other regions of the world, especially in the North: average temperatures in Canada have increased by at least 1.6 C (33.8 F) since 1948. As the Honourable Catherine McKenna MP, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, told activist group Climate Reality: “Continued amplification of warming at high latitudes is projected under all scenarios of future climate change.”

What can be done? One recent study explains that planting one trillion trees could be an effective way to fight global warming – and Canada is specifically one of six countries with enough land to do this. While this is encouraging, the whole tree-planting process can take up to five years: time for Canada to roll up its sleeves and start working on it.  

This article was written for this blog only.