Federal officials are set to say how much more likely Eastern Canada's heat wave was because of human-caused climate change. A person floats in the Madawaska River in Renfrew County, Ont., on Monday, July 8, 2024. The European climate service Copernicus is reporting the global temperature in June hit a record high for the 13th straight month.
It will mark the public debut of Canada's new rapid extreme weather event attribution pilot program, which officials say can determine whether and to what extent climate change made a specific heat wave more likely or intense. Scientists say attribution studies can inject climate science into public discussions of specific extreme weather events when it's most relevant, while underlining the effects of planet-warming emissions.
Hundreds of attribution studies have been published over the past two decades, largely keeping with the same general premise.