For the second straight month, January temperatures in Quebec remained above the seasonal norm. Cold records have been broken elsewhere in the world.
Posted at 7:48pm
These fluctuations, which could be symptomatic of “a system in the process of collapse”, estimates Philippe Gachon, researcher at the Center for the Study and Simulation of Climate at the Regional Scale.
On average, January temperatures from Abitibi-Témiscamingue to Gaspésie were 5 degrees Celsius above the seasonal norm. This is Environment Canada’s assessment at the start of 2023.
“It’s special this year, I’ve rarely seen it, and I’ve been in Quebec for 30 years,” says Mr. Gachon, also a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).
Montreal never had a day below -20 degrees Celsius and only one day below -15 degrees Celsius. The average temperature for January is -4 degrees Celsius, the highest ever recorded in the metropolis. The previous record of -4.7 degrees Celsius was set in 2017.
“What was unusual this year in Montreal and parts of Canada was that the maximum temperatures were unusually hot,” said Mr. Gachon.
A graph from the UQAM Meteorological Center actually shows a portrait of the month of January, when daily high temperatures are consistently above normal and only once when the minimum temperature drops below average. A completely different picture than in previous years.
This month of January is also characterized by a large amount of snow and a significant number of alternating freezes and thaws, says Mr. Gachon.
And all this at a time when the month of December had also broken temperature records. “So it’s two consecutive months in the east of the country that are unusually hot,” he notes.
Significant fluctuations
Elsewhere in the country, the January average is also above seasonal norms, reports André Cantin, weather forecaster for Environment Canada.
Temperatures in the northern Prairies and Northwest Territories were 9 degrees above average, the widest disparity in the country. British Columbia was rather spared from the rise in temperature.
New York City has also experienced the longest winter without snow in fifty years, the US broadcaster CBS said on Monday.
A heatwave became widespread in Europe in early January, when at least eight countries recorded record temperatures. “At the same time, we broke cold records in north-eastern Siberia,” recalls Mr. Gachon. These fluctuations in temperature anomalies related to atmospheric circulation, these are things that we expect to see with climate change. »
Current temperatures will be the subject of further investigation, the researcher reports. “But it’s clear that when we break records, it’s something,” he says.
With Pierre-André Normandin, La Presse