Hot Cowgirls

​On September 4, The Weather Network reproduced a CBC story called Edmonton, Calgary see hottest July on record:
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July was the hottest on record for Calgary and Edmonton. (Bert Savard/CBC)
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​The Weather Network quotes the CBC reporter:
It's been a hot, record-setting summer in Alberta. And it's not over yet.
This July was the hottest on record for both Edmonton and Calgary.
And on Monday, multiple communities across the province broke single-day temperature records.
On the whole, this was the third-warmest summer in Edmonton.
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​The Weather Network’s single-day link takes you to their previous day’s story about warm Labour Day temperatures in Alberta. With respect to Calgary and Edmonton, that article sets out:

The high in Calgary on Monday topped off at an astonishing 31.1°C, making it the 17th-warmest September day on record. The all-time warmest temperature recorded in September was 33.3°C set back on Sept. 1, 1967.

Farther north in Edmonton, temperatures rose to a stifling 32.7°C, making it the sixth warmest September day on record, as well as the warmest day since September 2022.

An astonishing 17th warmest September temperature for Calgary … wow.

Getting back to the claim that it was the hottest July – this is just cherry-picking. If one is trying to make the connection between hot summer weather and Climate Change, as the reporter attempts, they should be looking at the entire meteorological summer (June/July/August) rather than just the one month that supports their position.

For Calgary, with an average summer ‘24 maximum of 23.6C, you only have to go back one year when the summer ‘23 avg. max. was 24.5C. For Edmonton at 24.1C, you have to go back just a bit further to 2021, which was 24.9C. Summer 2024 in Alberta was warm but not overly so.

The Weather Network (CBC) statement that 2024 was the 3rd warmest summer for Edmonton, likely stems from review of the data from 1996 onward, which is the start date of the current urban weather station. If the previous full record for the city centre is included, then the summer of 2024 drops down to a tie for 7th place.

With respect to July being the hottest month ever for both cities, Calgary is the easiest to refute. Again, the historical data considered by the reporter obviously doesn’t go back far enough. The July 1936 avg. max. was 28.7C while in 2024 it was 27.1C, moving it into 7th place as well when looking at the complete record.

The full data set does support that July 2024 in Edmonton was indeed the hottest on record, beating out 1981 by 1.1C. However, it should be noted that the readings come from the Blatchford weather station on the site of the now-closed City Centre Airport, and that location is near the central business district. The former airport land is currently being redeveloped into a multi-family housing district.
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Virtually every weather station becomes corrupted by the Heat Island effect over time, and city centre sites more so than suburban ones. This is illustrated by NASA’s graphic:
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As a city grows, the Heat Island effect intensifies. For the Edmonton weather station, a Wikipedia article sets out:

A weather station was established in 1937.[10] Over the years since then, its site witnessed increasing influence by the urban heat island effect.

By the mid-1970s, "Edmonton Municipal A." (as it was listed in the Monthly Record of Meteorological Observations in Canada) was regularly recording some of the longest frost-free periods in the Prairie Provinces, with the first fall frost often not coming before October.

It may not be New York, but Edmonton’s population is rapidly expanding – from about 87,000 in 1937, to 450,000 in 1975 (mid-1970s), to 640,000 in 1981, and now to over 1,500,000 in 2024.
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The increasing Heat Island effect just might account for the 1.1C difference in the July record heat between 1981 and 2024 rather than Climate Change, but that doesn’t fit the crisis narrative. Instead, half-truths and selective data work best for today’s agenda-biased media.
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