A deadly heat wave slowly boiling western Europe this month is being driven by a weather pattern known as an Omega block, which scientists say could become more common around the world — including in Canada.
The heat wave has pushed temperatures as much as 18 C above their seasonal average, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor. Hundreds of people have died, including at least 40 in France who have drowned while swimming to escape the heat, according to officials.
“Over the region studied, this heat wave is the most severe ever recorded,” the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists said in an analysis Friday.
Here’s what to know about an Omega block, and whether climate change is to blame.
What is an Omega block?
An Omega block gets its name from how the pressure systems appear on a weather map, which resembles the Greek letter “Ω.”
In Europe’s case, a bulge of warmer high pressure has settled over the affected countries, with low pressures on either side of it — the Atlantic coast to the west, and parts of eastern Europe at the opposite end.
The warmer air gets stuck or “blocked” within that structure, as opposed to normal conditions where the jet stream carries weather systems from west to east.
“Because you’ve got this high pressure system sitting there in the centre, you have a very stable and very warm air mass because the heat is moved northward into that area,” Gordon McBean, a professor emeritus in weather and environmental studies at Western University, said in an interview.
“Then it builds up over time.”
Omega blocks typically last between three and 10 days, but can sometimes persist for weeks.
What happens during an Omega Block?
Countries including Spain, France and Germany have been seeing hot and dry conditions. Because the high pressure also suppresses the formation of clouds, there’s been little relief from the sun.
France recorded its hottest-ever temperature of 43.8 C in the small southwestern town of Pissos on Wednesday.
Get daily National news
That day was the hottest day for the entire country on record, according to the Meteo France weather agency, which said the average temperature measured at 30 French weather stations across day and night reached 30 C for the first time ever.
Saarbruecken, a German city near the French border, broke the national temperature record on Friday at 41.3 C.
Regions in the low-pressure areas flanking the heat wave, meanwhile, are more likely to see cooler, rainy conditions.
Britain has been been caught in the middle of the high and low pressure systems, with intense heat in the south and east and cooler temperatures in the north and west, according to the UK Met Office.
Still, forecasters extended a red alert for heat Friday after the temperature in Suffolk, England, reached 37.3 C, marking the hottest June day the country has ever seen.
- Calgary area ‘very uniquely situated’ for study of hailstorms, says researcher
- Saskatchewan boosts disaster aid in response to storm-packed spring and summer
- Flooding damage closes Telus World of Science for months, 68% of staff laid off
- Wildfire smoke transforms skies as air quality plummets across Canada
Can an Omega block happen in Canada?
Yes — and it’s already happened this year.
Meteorologists at the Weather Network say an Omega block was responsible for a late May heat wave in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Much of the region saw highs reaching 35 C.
Another Omega block was also behind the record-smashing 21 C high that Saskatchewan reported in January 2024, the network said.
McBean said Omega blocks can be predicted with fairly high confidence before they occur, noting it’s one of several extreme weather patterns that are becoming more frequent in recent years.
What role does climate change play?
The World Weather Attribution analysis said the European heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.
A similar heat wave in the same month 50 years ago would have been around 3.5 C cooler than this one, the scientists said.
The analysis added the past week’s high nighttime temperatures were 100 times more likely to occur than they would have been two decades ago.
That’s because of the rising baseline of global temperatures made possible by greenhouse gas emissions.
The European heat wave is also occurring around the five-year anniversary of the deadly heat dome that scorched British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. in 2021, which saw more than 600 deaths in the province alone.
McBean said it’s important for people and officials to be aware of the increasing frequency of such heat events and to prepare accordingly.
“These are situations that are leading unfortunately to death (and) economic cost of significant amounts, and these are going to increase in the future,” he said.
“We need to adapt our ways of dealing with them,” he added, from improved warning systems to ensuring homes and buildings are designed with cooling in mind.
—with files from the Associated Press and Reuters
Omega block is quite common in Ontario. The jet stream goes below the Great lakes, and a persistent High pressure zone forms above them. Totally normal, not caused be climate change.
For the record:
Al Gore: All lies to make money
IPCC: All lies to make money
East Anglia University: All lies to make money.
If people are to believe in the effect of Global warming, and it is happening, activists and organizations need to stop with the lies and exaggerated doom and gloom reports.
Want to find out I’m right? Do some research. (unfortunately I know no one will)
Why is it (FILL IN THE BLANK) is heating at twice the global average rate? It’s true but not because of what you think it is.
HINT: check average global rate of temp increase and average temp increase of the oceans.
NO CLIMATE ACTIVIST WANTS YOU TO KNOW THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you know Europe doesn’t even have AC, maybe they should figure that out.
When I was in elementary/middle school, we learned the world was on the verge of overpopulation and there would be dire consequences to over consumption and waste production. Fast forward 30-years to modern times and there is not a word about overpopulation, like we are just supposed to stay dumb and breed like rats to produce more cheap labour and consumers for capitalist political leaders and business owners.
There is nothing better than the world’s wealthiest, who live lifestyles of pure luxury and opulence, telling the rest of us to make hard sacrifices. Let that sink in.
Everything should be light colored, galvanized metal for roofing. light colors for vehicles and roads and plant trees wherever possible.
TRUMP 2028 make canada great again.
omega block—more like man manipulated block
Yeah, there’s this thing called Air Conditioning. It runs on electricity, which is mostly generated by burning coal and natural gas. But Europe’s too good for that, so when it gets unusually hot or cold, they suffer. No sympathy here.
COP28, Where over 70 000 “delegates” get into airplanes and fly to Dubai to stay in 5 star accommodations with gas powered AC and room service paid for by tax payers all over the world. Then they return to their home countries to tell us plebs we need to consume less and that heating our homes when it’s -20 is causing too much pollution. Hypocrisy at it’s finest!
but but how can this happen trudi banned plastic straws and some bags, then screwed us all with the save the world carbon tax
First rightnuts lead by the Orange turd say there is no such thing as climate change. Now, that we have yearly heat waves, they say: OK, there’s a climate change, but nothing we can do about it. Loosers.
@ anonymous 2:31 We are so very tired of your ilk running around like chicken little shouting the sky is falling the sky is falling. Our planet’s climate has always and will always change. There is nothing you or your friends on the left can do about that and all the carbon taxation un the world will only do one thing, make elites and their friends richer. Maybe your efforts would bear more fruit if you focussed on real problems like the garbage pollution coming from places like India where they throw all their garbage in the rivers and which ends up in the indian ocean and elsewhere. Clean up the garbage instead of spreading it.
There are only 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that know about climate change & work to mitigate its effects, & those that have to find out the hard way.
awe look at them changing words just to scare people. mainstream is such a joke.
Beats having a Polar Vortex or an Atmospheric River by a long shot.
I wish it would happen. It’s been under 30 all year
@Ben stop with the climate alarmism. Even those scientists that relied on the computer modelling of the UN IPCC have now acknowledged in a recent report that the modelling was not correct and that temperatures overall across the planet have not significantly increased as predicted by the computer modelling. Typically with the left garbage in garbage out.
You have to love all these alarming new words and statements they are using now to cause panic in the public. It used to be heatwave or cold fronts to call the weather. My mother and Father got married in England in 1951 in a heatwave men only wore their coats and ties for the photos. Remember the heat of the seventy’s with less A/Cs than these days. Talk about causing panic instead of finding ways to help people get through the bad weather hot or cold because you cannot control the climate or weather. Where has all the carbon tax money gone, that’s the big question
“Omega Block ”
Formally known as a “summer heat wave”.Its been happening since the dawn of time but we needed a more dramatic name for the climate change propaganda.
Fuc off
For those too ignorant to know – the primary mechanism to end an omega block is a transition back to a zonal flow…stupid.
Over population can contribute to this problem. France 69 million people, Germany 83 million people, Italy 58 million. Each of these countries has a smaller area than the province of Alberta (5 million people) which increases the chances of Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.
The lack of insulation and modern HVAC systems along with galvanized zinc roofing which traps and absorbs heat contributes to the problem. In Paris historic zoning rules can restrict adding modern insulation or air conditioning.
The rate of change in temperature over a short period of time is unprecedented. Therein lies the issue. The earth has had climate cycles but never before have these taken place in such a short period. Ecosystems, etc. which humans rely on will die because they cannot evolve quickly over a short time span.
The climate change phenomenon is cyclical and just because this type of heat has not been recorded doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened previously. There was the medieval warm period in which the climate warmed the northern hemisphere significantly and produced conditions similar to what we see in the middle east today. That gave way to the mini ice age from which we have slowly been exiting over the last couple of hundred years. Temperatures in the 1930’s were regularly over 90 degrees Fahrenheit and over months created the great dust bowls of the midwestern USA and into Canada. We humans are adaptable as we must be for our species to have survived this long, and we will easily survive this little blip in the weather and climate.
Yes, the climate is changing, as it is a cyclical thing. It has always been changing and it will keep doing so in the future.
Hardly a fault of the ordinary people going about their daily grind.
If you want to blame someone, blame the rich and powerful cretins who keep flying their azzes all over the world like they couldn’t just use Zoom for their “climate conventions”. And the likes of Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and her twit of a boyfriend, why do they have to fly everywhere.
Don’t even get me started on the climate preachers of all countries that had tens of thousands of acres of PROTECTED area of Amazon rainforest hacked away to build a brand new road to Belem (Brazil) for their limos to get to the COP30 UN climate summit! Bunch of effing hypocrites.
No, the polar ice caps are not gone and polar bears are not extinct.
Al Gore’s doom and gloom predictions have not materialized. His ocean side properties are still standing, and he’s got very rich from his alarmism.
Climate change has occurred before. But it was over a much longer time period. That’s the problem climate science deniers can’t admit. Very sad but thankfully they are a small minority.
Yes, weather is possible all around the globe. In fact, before humans even existed to cause it, the earth experienced climate change multiple times.
Including a lovable 20th Century Fox film celebrating its reality in an otherwise ficticious story.
Going back to reality, we know the earth has been warming ever since that last film, or peak glacial period.
But humans think they can cool the earth if they stop producing 0.00 something or other percent of global atmospheric carbon humans create by impoverishing the nations that produce the least od it to resolve elitist’s daddy issues.
Global warming which has happened very quickly since industrialization will doom us. Climate change has taken place before but that was over much longer time periods. It’s sad that the climate change deniers don’t know that.
40 idiots drowned, your blaming heat. Sadly climate alarmist only have journalist skills of an eleven year old. They dont understand or can comprehend weather cycles are centuries not yearly or decades.
These green grift fear mongering clowns print very uneducated statements and sadly the sheep eat it up.
Having a hard time keeping up with all the news weather terms. Oh right, they’ve been around for a longtime, just never used until the powers that be, needed to capitalize on the masses ignorance. So now we get Omega block…to go with Bomb cyclone, weather whiplash among others…one more terrifying than the next.
Getting real tired of the fear mongering in every aspect of media
Mental note, Europe hot at moment.
Large swaths of Canada, taking up a far larger proportion of the planet Earth than Europe, is experiencing cooler seasonal temperatures.
It doesn’t matter.
I tire of the ridiculous claims, “scientific research on human-made climate change are not only accurate, but it can be evidenced by the same science failing to predict the daily, weekly, seasonal weather patterns and forecasts.
It is the most unscientific pile of nonsensical contrivance by those that abuse the ignorant masses for profit and power.
No, I am not denying human made climate change, but there is no way in hell that the data used to calculate weather patterns in the distant future are accurate but no longer function locally or “with any predictability”, in the present. It is a complete fabrication.
Let me know when the garage block happens