YORKTON - On the oft chance you live in an air-conditioned home and have not ventured outside in days, it’s hot out there folks.
In fact, in many locales it has been record breaking hot.
A recent article by Gordon McBean, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography and Environment, Western University re-published recently at SaskToday.ca gives some insight on the level of hot we are seeing.
It stated this June saw major heat waves across Canada with peak temperatures — noting on June 19, more than 100 locations across Canada set new heat records for that day, with Bathurst, N.B., being the hottest at 37.6 C.
The numbers this year seem to be following a trend with the same article noting the year 2023 was the globally hottest year on record.
Now add in that McBean also wrote, “Over the past 12 months, human-caused climate change added, on average, 26 more days of extreme heat across the globe, according to an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies report. It is further estimated that 6.8 billion people experienced at least 31 days of extreme heat, with tens of thousands of people dying. The real number may be much higher, because unlike sudden “event” weather disasters, heat waves kill more slowly and less obviously, depending on pre-existing health conditions. Extreme heat can also affect mental health.”
What does that mean for those of us in Yorkton, Saskatchewan?
That is the unsettling question because the answer remains at least to the public an unknown.
There are those who are convinced climate change is little more than a bugaboo foisted upon the world by the majority of scientists for some nebulous yet nefarious reason, but we need to move beyond that thinking and prepare for what might be a bleak future in some cases.
It needs to be remembered Yorkton exists largely to serve the rural farming community – one need look no farther than the two massive canola crushing plants to appreciate that reality.
But, what does farming look like in East Central Saskatchewan if the current heat wave proves an annual occurrence?
What then, if the number of days of extreme heat lengthen?
How does the canola needed by those crushing plants fare in extended heat waves year-after-year?
Now obviously there is only limited things we can do as individuals, or even as a broader community collective, but we do need to consider what might be on the horizon, and just what it might mean in terms of Yorkton’s future.
Certainly if the trend toward hot continues the future will be changed from what it would be if climate change were not happening.
