The temperature in parts of Prince Edward Island on Tuesday was hot enough to scorch a new record into the province’s logbooks.
A temperature of 39.5 Celsius was observed at the UPEI Climate Lab’s Fox Island station near Alberton, and a recording device at Maple Plains in central P.E.I. registered a high of 38.1 C.
Both topped the previous hottest-day-ever record of 36.7, set in Charlottetown on Aug. 19, 1935.
“This is a sobering record to break, especially during this extremely dry period where Island rainfall is between 70 mm to 110+ mm below average over the last two months,” said CBC meteorologist Jay Scotland.
“Climate scientists have been warning for years about increased periods of hot and dry weather, and we are certainly experiencing just that.”
UPEI instructor Don Jardine, who in June published Prince Edward Island~Epekwitk~Climate Almanac: A Weather and Climate Almanac of the Smallest Province in Canada, believes these high temperatures are the direct result of climate change.
“The warming of our climate is continuing. I mean, we know that last year, the average temperature at Charlottetown for the whole year was 7.7 and that was the highest-ever annual average temperature for the Charlottetown area ever recorded.
“So we see the symptoms,” Jardine said.
P.E.I.’s location near the Atlantic Ocean has long buffered it from the kind of wild swings in temperature seen further inland in Canada, he pointed out.
But as ocean waters warm and the Gulf Stream shifts, Jardine said extreme high temperatures will become more common in the Maritimes.
