Is climate change to blame for this early heat wave?

Scientists sifting through data to find links to extreme weather

- KATE ALLEN

As the GTA and much of Eastern Canada swelters through a third straight day of extreme heat, a few questions reliably pop up: Is the splash pad open? What's the least sweaty way to get to work? How much ice cream is reasonable for a single adult to consume over a 24-hour period?

And then the big one, the one that rattles around so often these days: is this climate change?

A new, prototype rapid extreme weather attribution system piloted by Environment and Climate Change Canada will be getting a workout in the coming days as it processes reams of data to identify the fingerprint of human-induced warming in the heat wave. The team joins a growing group racing to identify the involvement of climate change in the immediate aftermath of extreme weather, from floods to wildfires to droughts.

While these programs are run by research scientists, their primary audience is not academics: it's you, the public.

"Attribution science" is intended to break through the disconnect between the global, gradual shifts of climate change and our lived reality on the ground.

Event attribution "can help people understand how climate change is impacting us here in Canada," said Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a Toronto-based research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada's climate research division.

"If we talk about global temperature increases, it can seem a bit disconnected from our everyday lives.

But it's definitely not-we are feeling the effects of climate change, and through extreme events like this, this is a way to understand that."

Meteorologists on Wednesday warned that this week's heat wave is very rare for so early in the summer, and risks breaking multiple records. It's also very dangerous.