but it s what happened in canada in a week of extreme heat, then fire that took the eyes of the world to a small village in british columbia. the whole village is going. this is lytton, filmed by residents fleeing as it burns almost to extinction. for three straight days injune, this place recorded canada s highest temperature on record, reaching 49.6 celsius, just before fire swept through it, burning nearly everything. it was an historic heatwave across western canada and the north west usa, as a so called high pressure heat dome grew over the area, both trapping and building the heat day on day. it s thought the extreme heat was a contributing factor in hundreds of deaths. in the usa, california is suffering another disastrous fire season, with the state s second largest fire on record, the dixie fire,
the flood prompted this scheme to build these reservoirs with this one alone capable of holding 25,000 cubic metres of water. scientists say a warmer world means more frequent, intense rainfall. and july was the world s hottest month in records going back 142 years. a united nations report in august said without immediate deep cuts to emissions, limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 or even 2 degrees will be beyond reach. well, to help put into context everything that we have seen happening over the past few months i m joined here at the reservoir in thatcham by professor hannah cloke, a climate scientist and hydrologist at the university of reading here in the uk. hannah, we of course are shocked by what has happened but there is an element from climate scientists of we told you so. so can we both be shocked but also not surprised at these events? if you see the scale of the recent flooding and the recent heat that we have seen and the fires, i mean, it is impossible not to be shock
134 fahrenheit, back in 1913. but that reading, taken at this weather station, just doesn t add up, according to weather historian christopher burt. observations got to be a little kind of screwy in may of 1913 when it kind of looked like maybe he was just filling in the spaces for the temperature, because they were kind of all the same day after day even though temperature was varying wildly from day to day at all the other surrounding sites. so that was kind of a little red flag at the beginning there. the world meteorological organisation verifies temperature records, and randy cerveny who signs off their investigations says he hasn t seen enough evidence to discount the 1913 reading. obviously we don t have as good of quality of data going back to that time as we do with modern records today. we can take the record and actually have the sensor that recorded it tested independently in a lab and make
welcome to weather world. first a question what do mexico, finland, hungary, estonia, oman, republic of congo have in common? they are all countries that have set new temperature records since we were last on air in april. but it is what happened in canada in a week of extreme heat then fire that took the eyes of the world to a small village in british columbia. this is lytton, filmed by residents fleeing as it burns almost to extinction. for three straight days injune this place recorded canada s highest temperature on record, reaching 49.6 celsius, just before fire swept through it, burning nearly everything. it was an historic heatwave across western canada and the north west usa as a so called high pressure heat dome grew over the area both trapping and building the heat day on day.
sure that it was working. we don t have that luxury back with observations that go back to the 1900s. but we do the best that we can and in the case of the death valley in 1913 record, the evidence just hasn t been presented yet that it was a faulty observation. wmo temperature verification takes time. injuly this year it officially recognised a new high temperature from antarctica, over a year after it was recorded in early 2020. christopher burt says time is not on the side of the 1913 death valley record. the fact is, if there was an investigation and it takes two or three years, 134 is probably going to happen somewhere on earth in the next three years anyhow, so it is kind of a moot point anyway, i think, going forward. the wmo is also looking into the new europe high temperature from italy in august. randy cerveny says it s important to get their investigations