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"This is not the new normal. Normal is going to keep changing until we stop emitting greenhouse gas."
Dozens of sudden-death calls that Vancouver authorities have received this week are believed to be tied to the dangerous heatwave currently scorching Canada and pushing temperatures to record levels, an event experts say is a direct result of the human-caused climate emergency.
On Tuesday, the temperature hit 49.6Â degreesC (121Â degreesF) in Lytton, British Columbia, an all-time high and the third consecutive day that Canada heat has crushed records.
"Before this heatwave, the Canadian national heat record stood at 45Â degreesC. This record held since July 1937," meteorologist Scott Duncan noted in a series of tweets. "Along came 27 [June] and smashed this by a whopping +1.6Â degreesC. But we were not done here, the heatwave was just getting started. The very next day, temperatures soared to a staggering 47.9Â degreesC, destroying the new record. This did not last long though..."
"And here we are," Duncan added. "Almost 50Â degreesC at 50 degrees north. This is desert heat in Canada. We have never seen this level of heat this far north anywhere on Planet Earth until now."
Pointing to the alarming new figures, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said that "heat records are usually broken by tenths of a degreenot 4.6Â degreesC."
"We're in a climate emergency that has never once been treated as an emergency," Thunberg added.
As the Washington Post reported, the record 121Â degreesF temperature in Lytton "is more extreme than the all-time high in Las Vegas, 117, and higher than most places in the Lower 48 states outside the Desert Southwest."
"These are temperatures rarely found outside of Death Valley," meteorologist Eric Holthaus said of Canada's record heat. "Only a handful of places in the world have ever been this hot."
The Canada heatwave comes as large swaths of the United States -- from the Pacific Northwest to the Northeast -- are also experiencing devastating high temperatures. At least five deaths have been linked to the latest U.S. heatwave, which is melting power cables, cracking asphalt roads, and intensifying wildfires. More than 1,000 people in the Pacific Northwest have been hospitalized in recent days due to possible heat-related illness.
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