Why broken temperature records in Okanagan, Kamloops aren’t a sign of climate change

Daily low temperature records were broken last week in Kamloops and Vernon, but a meteorologist with Environment Canada says breaking records isn’t the clear climate change alarm that it might seem like. 

Bobby Sekhon said it’s not unusual for new daily temperature records to be set. 

“It was quite a cold stretch of time for a couple of days there. However, we did break several daily records across the province,” he said. “It was definitely something notable, but not entirely out of the ordinary.”

The morning of Oct. 14 was the coldest on record for Kamloops and Vernon. Kamloops saw a low temperature of -4.7 Celsius and in Vernon it was -3 C. 

Around B.C. there were 18 records broken on Oct. 13, and 29 records broken on Oct. 14. 

September was a temperature record breaking month in the opposite direction for Kamloops and in the Okanagan it was the warmest September since we’ve been cataloguing temperature.

Sekhon said it’s tough to come up with an average of how many daily temperature records are broken per weather station per year, and the records aren’t really a good way of looking at how climate change is progressing. 

The real climate change alarm bell isn’t the occasional daily temperature record, it’s the mountain of data and research of the average temperature rising.

“It’s hard to tie any single event and whether it’s affected by climate change. That requires more study by climate change experts. However, what I can say is that with climate change, we can expect more extremes in the future,” he said. 

The average temperature in Canada has risen 2.4 C since 1948, and northern Canada’s average temperature has been rising three times faster than the global warming rate on average. 

Sekhon said the people who could be affected by daily temperature records are farmers and homeless people. 

“These minimum temperature records, they can have impacts on agriculture. Things like killing frost especially for multiple days,” he said. “Unhoused people or people without adequate heating in their living arrangement obviously could be impactful for them too.”