At the equinox: Taking the temperature of Canada's summer

Beaches are empty, sunblock and bug spray have been shelved, and the last campfire embers have turned to ash. The fall equinox is Wednesday at 4:21 a.m. eastern, and with that, summer is officially over.

While daily temperatures are beginning to cool, it was a very hot summer for parts of Canada — though not for all.

Meteorologists say 2015 overall is on track to be the hottest year on record globally, beating the previous record set last year.

"Stick a thermometer in the planet and it's clearly showing a fever," says David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.

• July 2015 was the hottest month on modern record
• Global heat records smashed in first half of 2015
• Hottest year on global record was Canada's coolest in 18 years

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that the month of August, this past summer as a whole, and the first eight months of 2015 all smashed global records for heat.

The story isn't as straightforward for Canada. Due to the country's size, there can be notable variations in temperature across the country.

"2015 is going to come out warmer than normal, but it's unlikely to be the warmest year on record in Canada because we saw some temperatures that were just moderate in some areas, " Phillips says.

"But at least we will be able to say all our four seasons in this country were warmer than normal."

The western half of the country really felt the heat, with B.C. seeing the warmest January-though-August on record. The heat in B.C., Alberta and the northern Mackenzie region was preceded by a warmer than average winter and spring. And the unusually high temperatures were accompanied by forest fires, drought and low water levels throughout B.C.

On June 27/28, for example, temperatures passed 40 degrees Celsius in parts of B.C. — the first places in Canada to reach that temperature in 2015. Heat records were broken in more than 30 communities. Cranbrook had its hottest day since record-keeping began in 1901 at nearly 37 C, and Warfield had its hottest June 27 on record at 40.6 C (4.6 C higher than the previous record), according to The Weather Network.

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Meanwhile, Ontario and eastward had temperatures that were about average and in some cases slightly cooler, according to Environment Canada.

Phillips says there were slightly cooler than average temperatures in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence areas in particular. "It was the only region in Canada where people were saying, 'where's the heat?'"

On average, he says this region was about 0.2 degrees Celsius cooler than usual this summer.

'Pacific blob' effect

Phillips says a lot of people erroneously blame El Nino, a band of warm Pacific ocean water, for B.C.'s scorching summer. Instead, he's says it's the so-called 'Pacific blob' that is to blame, which is a different mass of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that stretches north of the equator.

"The water was like a hot tub — it was two to three degrees warmer than normal," he says, adding that the mass of water has remained warm since the fall of 2014.

The blob can also be blamed for bringing exotic fish further north, and could be responsible for the massive algae bloom that has been lingering off the west coast.

"There haven't been a lot of storms to churn up the water and expose it to cool water, so it was sort of unusual and persistent. It was almost El Nino-like without being El Nino," he says.

'Godzilla' El Nino coming

Phillips says we can expect a milder winter, which should be a relief as Canada just endured two brutally cold ones back-to-back.

"Even if this winter turned out to be normal, it would seem tropical compared to the last two," says Phillips.

This winter, he says we'll get a 'super' El Nino, similar to what Canada experienced during the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 winters. Both of those winters were among the warmest on record.

"This is powerful, it's big, it's very warm — to be an El Nino it's got to be half a degree warmer than normal. This is two to three degrees warmer than normal. So it's a monster. It's called the Godzilla of El Ninos," says Phillips.

But he adds that several factors make it difficult to forecast how much impact El Nino will have. For example, Phillips says climatologists didn't used to pay much attention to the Arctic sea ice because it was always frozen. But warming temperatures have led to a significant loss of ice cover, in turn contributing to new weather conditions globally. Plus, the Pacific blob will likely still be around, imposing its own effects on weather patterns.

"Will the Pacific blob and El Nino be a tag team, so that we will say that this is the first year that we cancel winter? Or will they compete against each other?" asks Phillips.

He says most meteorologists predict El Nino will dominate, but it's not a sure thing.

Either way, even with a few months left to the year, Phillips says it's unlikely anything will prevent 2015 from being the hottest ever.

"You would have to have the ice age cometh to prevent the world from saying that 2015 will be the warmest."