An 80-second video of the North American heatwave is a horrifying glimpse of our near future
Record-shattering heatwaves have hit the northern hemisphere over recent weeks. Now, a newly-released video has brought the impact of that baking heat into sharp and distressing focus. It paints a horrifying picture of the world’s near future.
Unliveable temperatures
The clip shows salmon swimming in a river in Washington State covered in lesions and fungus. The non-profit organisation Columbia Riverkeeper, which released the footage, says the salmon were ‘dying from the hot water’ and that their injuries are a result of heat-stress.
The organisation’s executive director, Brett VandenHeuvel, said that the salmon had been swimming upstream in the Columbia River when they veered off to the Little White Salmon River, where the footage was recorded on 16 July. VandenHeuvel described the fishes’ change of course as an attempt to “escape a burning building”.
On 27 July, the group said that the river temperature is currently over 21C (71F). That temperature is above the legal limit of 20C (68F) for the river set in the Clean Water Act, a threshold that scientists have put in place to “protect salmon from unsafe temperatures”.
A marine biologist from the University of British Columbia, Christopher Harley, has also warned that the heatwave could have killed over one billion marine animals on the Pacific coast in Canada.
“They’re suffocating”
Columbia Riverkeeper asserted that the climate crisis is partly responsible for the salmons’ horrific predicament. But it also said river dams that “create unnaturally hot water due to huge stagnant reservoirs” are to blame.
Record-shattering heatwaves have hit the northern hemisphere over recent weeks. Now, a newly-released video has brought the impact of that baking heat into sharp and distressing focus. It paints a horrifying picture of the world’s near future.
Unliveable temperatures
The clip shows salmon swimming in a river in Washington State covered in lesions and fungus. The non-profit organisation Columbia Riverkeeper, which released the footage, says the salmon were ‘dying from the hot water’ and that their injuries are a result of heat-stress.
The organisation’s executive director, Brett VandenHeuvel, said that the salmon had been swimming upstream in the Columbia River when they veered off to the Little White Salmon River, where the footage was recorded on 16 July. VandenHeuvel described the fishes’ change of course as an attempt to “escape a burning building”.
On 27 July, the group said that the river temperature is currently over 21C (71F). That temperature is above the legal limit of 20C (68F) for the river set in the Clean Water Act, a threshold that scientists have put in place to “protect salmon from unsafe temperatures”.
A marine biologist from the University of British Columbia, Christopher Harley, has also warned that the heatwave could have killed over one billion marine animals on the Pacific coast in Canada.
“They’re suffocating”
Columbia Riverkeeper asserted that the climate crisis is partly responsible for the salmons’ horrific predicament. But it also said river dams that “create unnaturally hot water due to huge stagnant reservoirs” are to blame.
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