‘It’s devastating’: summer in Canada’s Arctic region brings severe heatwaves

The arrival of August in the Arctic typically hints that autumn, with its dwindling daylight and cold weather, will soon return.

But on a recent afternoon, Sandy Gordon and her four children plunged into the silty waters of the Canada’s Mackenzie River, escaping a searing heatwave that has descended on the town of Inuvik.

“We absolutely love it when it’s nice and hot,” she said. “It’s so nice to be able to enjoy a true summer.”

Seasonal change in the north is rapid and, for local people, summer marks a brief reprieve from months of bitter cold. But a heatwave that is currently hovering over the community 130 miles (209km) north of the Arctic Circle threatens to shatter its all-time heat record.

While the warmth has brought joy, it also comes with a set of lingering worries, including the threat of wildfires and thawing permafrost, leading some to wonder if the growing trend of balmy weather might come with too steep a cost.

On Wednesday, just past the northernmost traffic lights in North America, a digital thermometer slowly climbed, eventually reaching 35C (95F) – and passing an all-time record of 33C set last year. Families left the NorthMart grocery store clutching boxes of popsicles and ice cream. A weather alert from Environment Canada classified the heat as “severe”, warning of “significant threat to life or property”.

The unseasonably warm temperatures mark the fourth heatwave of the season. While some dream of escaping work and leaping into nearby lakes and rivers, others aren’t thrilled.

“Winter absolutely sucks. I hate it,” said Kamdyn Alexie. “But at the same time, heat in the mid-30s isn’t so great either.”

Unlike more southern cities, where the hottest temperatures peak late afternoon, a midnight sunset in Inuvik means the heat persists well into the evening, offering little relief. The town is surrounded by forest, but the spruce and fir are dwarf-like compared with other regions, and offer little shade. Nor was the community, which sits on more than 1,000ft (305 metres) of permafrost, built with heatwaves in mind.

The recent heatwave amplifies what residents say has been a difficult summer. Inuvik, located in a drainage of the Mackenzie River, has experienced low water levels due to prolonged droughts in British Columbia and Alberta, which feed the mighty river. Barges carrying food and supplies have been unable to traverse the waterways that link up northern outposts.

Alexie described a recent visit to visit to Hay River, a community nearly 800 miles away from Inuvik, where drought-like conditions had transformed a popular park into a “terrifyingly ugly” spectacle, with vegetation growing in areas typically covered by water.

For Gordon’s children, splashing through the river, the heat was a welcome counter to winter’s dark, months-long deep freeze, where temperatures have reached as low as -56C.

“We’ve made it here 10 times this year. It’s not often we get the chance to be here in August,” she said. “But I do worry, when it gets this hot and stays hot, about wildfires.”

In recent years, Canada’s record-breaking wildfire seasons have enveloped a region of the country historically spared from widespread destruction. And with the trend of warmer temperatures and prolonged periods of dry weather expected to continue in the Canadian north, so too is the risk of frequent and more intense wildfire seasons.

Last year, swaths of the Northwest Territories erupted in flames, forcing three-quarters of residents from their homes.

At one point, a fire burned less than 8 miles from Inuvik.

“We were all kind of on edge, waiting to hear whether we were going to need to pack a bag and escape. We’d just watched Yellowknife, the territory’s capital city, evacuate and we didn’t know if we were next,” said the deputy mayor, Natasha Kulikowski. “The sense of anxiety and panic was high. And so with this heat and the fires happening so recently, it’s hard to fully forget that feeling.”

This week, more than half of the territory was facing “extreme” fire risk, according to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.

Research over the years has shown that Canada is warming at a rate faster than the global average and in the Arctic, the warming is happening even faster.

The increased warming in northern latitudes is not yet fully understood, but scientists say the retreat of glaciers and disappearing sea ice both contribute to a feedback loop of warming, a significant factor contributing to Canada’s disproportionate temperature increase.

“As someone who loves heat, I’m so happy to have nice weather and to be outside. But the other day, when I was out picking berries, I could hear and feel the ground crunching under my feet because it’s so dry,” said Kulikowski. “And so when I look at it from a broader environmental perspective, it’s hard to come to any conclusion but this: it’s devastating.”