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WEEKEND READING | Why extreme heat caused by climate change will be deadly and what we can do to prepare and reduce casualties.
“It’s not hypothetical, it’s happening right now – we’re already seeing more heat waves,” said Céline Campagna, a health and climate change researcher at INSPQ. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf/Montreal Gazette
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On a hot June afternoon, a green oasis awaits visitors who wander behind 11460 Pelletier Ave. to explore what was once a parking lot for the four-story Montreal North apartment building.
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They suddenly find themselves among dozens of deciduous trees, providing summer relief to people who come to relax on shady benches, rocks and lounge chairs.
A resident stares at a laptop on a picnic table under a vine-covered pergola. Another appears lost in thought, reclining in a bright blue Adirondack chair.
Paul Levesque, 76, inspects the lush community garden he helps maintain in the parking lot-turned-park: neatly arranged tomatoes about to bloom, tall garlic standing still, raised beds of strawberries, carrots and lettuce.
“It’s a much nicer place and people appreciate the shade when it’s hot,” said Levesque, a retired security guard. “It used to be like this,” he added, pointing to the adjacent parking lot. Paved and jammed with cars, it is almost devoid of vegetation.
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Low-income Montreal neighborhoods like this one are hotter than others during the dog days of summer. They are much more likely than affluent areas to be urban heat islands – places that experience higher temperatures as buildings, roads and parking lots absorb and re-radiate the sun’s heat.
Once notorious for street gang activity, the neighborhood has been transformed in recent years thanks to the creation of nonprofit public housing and projects like the park, residents say.
Run by the anti-poverty non-profit group Parole d’excluEs, it’s known as La Voisinerie, a place where neighbors can catch the breeze and beat the heat.
As Montreal prepares for more and more severe heat waves due to climate change, this is one of hundreds of heat island initiatives undertaken in Montreal in recent years.
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Paul Levesque, 76, inspects the lush community garden he helps maintain in the Montreal North parking lot-turned-park known as La Voisinerie. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette “It’s a much nicer place and people appreciate the shade when it’s hot,” said Paul Levesque. Local artist Sergio Gutierrez, right, paints brightly decorated benches and sheds in the garden, a place where neighbors can beat the heat. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette
“This is not hypothetical, it’s happening right now — we’re already seeing more heat waves,” said Céline Campagna, a researcher who specializes in health and climate change at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).
Hot weather can be deadly, especially for vulnerable populations and people who live in the hotter parts of the island. Prolonged heatwaves killed 106 Montrealers in 2010 and another 66 in 2018.
Last year, Montreal recorded its warmest August since 1871.
This year, the city experienced its first sustained heatwave in mid-May, when daytime highs exceeded 30C for three days. This does not meet Montreal’s criteria for “extreme heat” (three days with an average maximum temperature of at least 33 C, with lows not falling below 20 C).
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But the spring heat may have been fatal for some, with Quebec reporting a spike in deaths in May that researchers say could be due to the weather.
Since then, the weather has been relatively pleasant in Montreal, with only two days above 30 C. But Weather Network meteorologists are predicting a hot and humid second half of summer.
In the coming decades, the region can expect more very hot days and longer extreme heat caused by the climate emergency, experts say.
“As a society, we are completely unprepared to face temperatures of 40 and above, as we saw in British Columbia last year (when 619 heat-related deaths were recorded) – and in Europe and the US Midwest a few years ago weeks,” Campagna said.
Edward Prest cools off at a fogging station on Boulevard Mont-Royal on July 12, 2022. The elderly are among the most at risk during extremely hot weather. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette
How hot will it get?
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“We’re in an area that’s going to experience more heat and more severe weather, more often,” said Montreal bioscientist Joanna Eikem.
On average, Montreal had just 11 days when the temperature reached at least 30 degrees Celsius between 1976 and 2005.
In the deadly summer of 2018, the city saw 20 days with temperatures above 30C.
By the second half of the century, Montreal could suffer between 37 and 54 days of 30 C or hotter weather, depending on greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of hot flashes lasting an average of three days, episodes can last six to eight days.
Projections from Canada’s Climate Atlas are contained in a recent report on extreme heat from the Intact Center on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, where Eyquem is managing director of climate-resilient infrastructure.
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“Cities are global warming hotspots because their man-made surfaces (such as asphalt and concrete) absorb heat and re-radiate it. Many of our cities can be 10 to 15 degrees hotter in terms of surface temperature than surrounding areas.
Rising mercury is a major threat to human life, she added.
“Historically in Canada, we’ve focused a lot on fires and floods because they cause a lot of financial loss,” Eyquem said. “But I think we’re going to see more heat wave deaths because it has a direct impact on our health.”
Hence the title of the report, which Eyquem co-authored: Irreversible Extreme Heat: Protecting Canadians and Communities from a Deadly Future.
“Even if we reduce our carbon emissions now, a certain amount of heat is already invested in our future,” she said. “We’re not going to avoid the effects of extreme heat, so we have to prepare for it.”
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Eyquem added: “We put the word deadly in the title to try to highlight the fact that heat kills and that these deaths can be avoided with the right information and the right actions.
“We can prepare and avoid death if we do the right thing. We need to focus on extreme heat, along with those financially costly disasters that we also see happening. Unfortunately, we don’t feel that urgency in Canada right now.
Sheltering from the heat under the shade of a Lachine Canal overpass last summer. Extreme heat caused by climate change is already killing Montrealers and will get worse. Photo by Dave Sidaway/Montreal Gazette
The elderly are among the most at risk during extreme hot weather.
“The problem is that as we age, we tend to lose a bit of our thirst reflex, so older people don’t realize they’re getting dehydrated,” said Montreal cardiologist Christopher Labos, a fellow in McGill’s Office of Science and Society.
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“And older people, especially if they have mobility issues, may not be able to rehydrate as easily as other people, so dehydration becomes a very serious concern.”
Only 43 percent of rooms in Quebec long-term care homes (known as CHSLDs) were air-conditioned as of last year, down from 19 percent two years earlier, according to a pensioners’ association. He obtained the information through access to information requests because the province could not provide the figure.
All CHSLDs now have, at a minimum, air-conditioned areas where residents can cool off, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health told the Montreal Gazette.
The elderly are not the only ones at risk.
Dehydration caused by excessive sweating can lead to several dangerous physiological changes affecting the heart, kidneys and brain function.
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“The problem with dehydration is that especially if you don’t have a good thirst reflex and you start to get confused because of the dehydration, you may not realize what’s going on,” Labos added.
Anyone can become dehydrated, which can lead to heat-related illnesses, including heat stroke, where the body can no longer regulate its temperature.
In addition to heat stroke, heat illnesses include heat rash, heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat-related muscle cramps and heat edema (swelling of the hands, feet and ankles), says Health Canada.
People with conditions such as heart disease and diabetes are at greater risk in the heat, as are those who work outdoors, people with low incomes,…
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