Hurricane Ida, west coast fires connected, according to climate expert

The damage from Hurricane Ida as it charged onshore as a powerful Category 4 storm in Louisiana can be connected to the devastation wrought by wildfires across western North America, including in B.C., according a climate expert at Stanford University in California.

Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh tells KGO in San Francisco that extreme natural events could get worse as the planet continues to warm.

At the end of June, a “heat dome” over much of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia led to record-smashing, all-time high temperatures across much of the region.

Heat-related deaths spiked in B.C., the province saw mass die-offs of shellfish as waters warmed along the South Coast beaches, and the heat and wind whipped up intense wildfires, including the one that wiped out much of Lytton.

Wildfires have also scorched hundreds of square kilometres of California, while the state and many of its western neighbours are enduring a decades-long mega-drought.

Diffenbaugh says extreme weather events affecting opposite sides of the continent are connected.

“The primary way they are connected is that global warming is happening at a global scale and all parts of the world are experiencing that,” he tells KGO, adding when it comes to hurricanes on the east coast, global warming is changing the way in which they happen.

“It’s not just how warm the surface temperatures are, but also the heat in the upper layers of the ocean is increasing and that is providing more energy for storms. We are not just seeing stronger storms but rapid intensification of storms.”

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He says the warming ocean is triggering what would typically be a Category 1 hurricane to intensify and grow into stronger categories.

“Decades ago you would see that one out of 100 storms would do that. Now we are seeing like a five per cent chance of that happening.”

Diffenbaugh argues that reaching net zero in terms of greenhouse gases is the only way to stabilize the climate system.

A recent Angus Reid poll suggests 38 per cent of Canadians identify the environment/climate change as a top priority in September’s federal election. In B.C., that figure is 45 per cent.