Sunday, June 17, 2007

Heat Wave on James Bay

I was surprised to see some pretty high temperatures in the North Country recently. I looked at a map of Canada's temperatures and saw a red area around James Bay, at the southern tip of Hudson Bay. This area normally has cool summers and Arctic cold winters. But when I went to the city on Wunderground, I found the temperature there was 34 degrees C. That's about 93 degrees F. They were having a heat wave. Further, it was considerably warmer in places around James Bay such as Moosonee than at places a little ways south, such as Thunder Bay. What was going on here?

In any case, it seemed to melt the ice in the southern part of the bay. There still remains considerable ice in northern James Bay and in Hudson Bay. There is a set of islands in southern Hudson Bay called the Belcher Islands. These islands are still surrounded by ice. The warm air came over here, and I noticed the temperature there was 70 degrees, the warmest in all of Nunavut, which includes all the islands in Hudson Bay. It did not get into the 90s there because of the ice. The place must have been very foggy. The dew point of the hot air must have been in the 70s, and when it got in contact with the 32-degree ice, it must have really caused a lot of condensation.

Is global warming causing this weather? No, you can't pin a solitary weather phenomenon on global warming. It's the pattern that counts, and the patterns have been edging towards warmer conditions on the planet, especially in the polar regions.