Arctic ocean beach might have been warmest in Canada
Waters in Kugmallit Bay reach 22 C
Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Saturday, July 16, 2016
INUVIK
East Whitefish beach at Kugmallit Bay might have been the warmest ocean beach in Canada on July 15, said Dustin Whalen, a physical scientist with Natural Resources Canada.
East Whitefish beach, pictured here in June 2015, had water temperatures of about 22 C on July 15. - photo courtesy of Dustin Whalen
|
Water temperatures in the bay, which is located on the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyaktuk, reached 22.2 C.
"It boggled my mind when I saw it," Whalen said. "That is very high."
In June, Whalen and a colleague with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans installed a weather and oceanography monitoring station at Kugmallit Bay.
The station is part of a project monitoring oceanographic change in the Tarium Niryutait Marine Protected Area.
The instruments are about half a kilometre from shore and provide information on the ocean temperature at a depth of about one metre, Whalen said.
"We have an instrument connected to a cable that connects to our weather station that broadcasts that temperature every hour," he said.
When he checked the temperature the morning of July 15, Whalen said he was so surprised he thought something must have been wrong.
"First I looked to see if it was broken," he said. "I don't think it is. I think it's real data."
Whalen said he then compared the East Whitefish beach temperature with other beaches in Canada.
Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island National Park is known as one of the warmest beaches in the country, but Whalen said water temperatures at East Whitefish beach were higher than Cavendish on July 15.
Water temperatures there were about 19 C.
Temperatures in British Columbia were about 14 C and in Nova Scotia they were about 17 C that day.
Whalen said warm water from the Mackenzie River emptying into Kugmallit Bay could be contributing to the temperatures.
"Something could be happening in the ocean, but I think something is happening in the Mackenzie Delta with the fresh water influx," he said.
Last year, a temperature gauge located about five kilometres from where the current monitoring station showed temperatures of about 17 C.
"Last year we had a temperature gauge about five kilometres away and the temperature averaged around 17 all summer and never went above 18," Whalen wrote in an email to News/North.
A heat wave in the region is also a contributor, he added. Temperatures reached 27 C the week of July 11.
"The warmer than normal air temperatures and the continuous baking of the sun, it's warming the water in that shallow region," he said.
Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor agreed.
"We've seen some significantly warmer temperatures in communities like Tuk, Inuvik, Kugluktuk," he said.
Proctor said the heat wave reached its peak the weekend of July 9 and is now beginning to cool down.
"The whole upper flow pattern is beginning to shift and change over the weekend, so we're going to get back into a much more traditional sort of steering flow pattern," he said on July 15.
"We're looking at significant cooling occurring across the Mackenzie Delta through the weekend and into early next week."
While the delta does experience warm weather in the summer, Proctor said last week's high temperatures and length of the heat wave are uncommon.
"It's not untypical for us to see warm temperatures intermittently through the delta, but to see the magnitude of the warming is somewhat unusual," he said.
No temperature records were broken in the Mackenzie Delta during the heat wave, Proctor added.
Whalen said he believes the temperatures reached on July 15 could have been the warmest ocean beach temperatures in Canada.
"We're confident it's warmer than the beaches we've observed," he said.
