TORONTO — The heat wave that gripped Eastern Canada last week brought stifling conditions, put pressure on the electricity grid and broke several temperature records as residents sweltered.
"I think it's an important milestone," said Nathan Gillett, a research scientist with Environment Canada and Climate Change Canada, who helped steer the pilot project since its approval in 2022 under the federal government's national adaptation strategy. Attribution studies typically follow the same general premise. Researchers run climate models under two different scenarios. One scenario is modeled on a pre-industrial climate before humans started burning fossil fuels, and a second is based on a simulation of our climate as it is now.
Days after a heat wave relented over Mexico earlier this month, World Weather Attribution released a report suggesting it was made 35 times more likely and about 1.4 degrees hotter due to climate change. More broadly, attribution science has also bolstered efforts to hold big emitters, such as oil companies, responsible for the casualties and costs of specific climate-fuelled weather extremes.