Heat wave trends in Canadian regions

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dc.contributor.authorKirchmeier-Young, Megan
dc.contributor.authorLi, Guilong
dc.contributor.authorWan, Hui
dc.contributor.authorZhang, Xuebin
dc.date.accessioned2026-05-26T19:07:05Z
dc.date.available2026-05-26T19:07:05Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractDespite their widespread impacts, there has been limited work to quantify how heat waves have changed in Canada. With no standard definition of a heat wave, we consider two different types of heat waves: climatological heat waves defined by the exceedance of a climatological percentile threshold and heat-warning heat waves which are based on the absolute threshold criteria for issuing heat warnings in Canada. These two heat waves represent different types of events with different primary impacts. We find the type of heat wave strongly influences the number of heat waves each year and the regional patterns of where such events are more prevalent. After the evaluation of climatologies, considering station observations and spatially complete gridded datasets, trends in annual metrics of heat waves were calculated for Canadian regions. Climatological heat waves increased in frequency, duration, and cumulative intensity between 1961 and 2020 across the country and in most regions. Heat-warning heat waves have increased over Northern and Atlantic Canada.
dc.description.reviewstatusReviewed
dc.description.scholarlevelFaculty
dc.identifier.citationKirchmeier-Young, M. C., Li, G., Wan, H., & Zhang, X. (2025). Heat wave trends in Canadian regions. Atmosphere-Ocean, 63(4), 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2025.2521501
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2025.2521501
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/23943
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherAtmosphere-Ocean
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectUN SDG 13: Climate Action
dc.subject#journal article
dc.subjectPacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)
dc.subjectheat waves
dc.subjectCanada
dc.subjectregional trends
dc.subjectextremes
dc.titleHeat wave trends in Canadian regions
dc.typeArticle

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