I study climate change. This summer, it got too hot for me to do my field work
This First Person column is written by Kathryn McRuer-Nicol, who lives in Montreal. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.
The sun was beating down mercilessly on my back as I bent over my work, making it impossible to ignore the cloying heat. I was in rubber boots and grungy clothes, standing in a Gaspésie salt marsh in eastern Quebec to conduct my master's research. I gave up on my measurements and slowly sat down on my haunches, placing my arms in the putrid marsh up to my elbows.
The water should have felt cooling. But our phones showed the air temperature was 32 C, 43 with humidity; on par with the hottest temperature ever recorded in the region. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my mucky palm but there was nowhere in the shadeless marsh to hide from the oppressive heat.
That day, my team had planned to spend about six hours moving heavy equipment around the salt marsh. We planned to collect tiny air samples from different regions in the marsh, along with environmental data like temperature and water salinity.
Salt marshes hold lots of carbon in their plants and soil. When the carbon is safely locked away from the atmosphere, it doesn't contribute to global warming. We wanted to see if an invasive plant, the European common reed, was changing how much carbon the salt marsh could hold.
My advisor — who is in her 70s — as well as two local high school students were there to help me and two other grad students. After about 45 minutes, the oldest and youngest members were the first to feel weak, dizzy and nauseous. They were visibly struggling, so I told them to leave the marsh and find shelter in the air-conditioned car, concerned they would become seriously ill.
The irony was not lost on me: Here I was researching how the salt marshes of Gaspésie could potentially provide an opportunity for a nature-based solution to stave off the impacts of climate change yet it was too hot for us to actually take measurements.
The remaining three of us tried to soldier on with the planned sampling, but could only work for about five minutes at a time before having to sit down in the salty muck to cool off. Sweat poured off our foreheads in a steady stream. We drank every litre of water and electrolytes that we had brought with us, but I still felt dehydrated.
My brain felt sluggish and disoriented. I could barely understand the words we were saying to each other. I developed a blinding migraine that left me curled up in agony for the rest of the day.
My field crew had been brought to the point of heat exhaustion. We were precipitously close to heatstroke within about 90 minutes of standing outside.
Until this summer, I have only very rarely felt heat as suffocating as I did that day. I live in Montreal, a city not known for its tropical weather. And until this summer, my daily life had not been so directly and obviously impacted by climate change.
Sure, Montreal can experience heat waves, but my office and home are well-equipped with fans and air conditioning so I, as a healthy woman in my 20s, have always been able to handle it.
That's not to say I'm not aware that climate change is affecting Canadians.
I was tree planting in northern Ontario during the summer of 2023 — when the smoke from historic wildfires that burned across the country that summer gave me a vicious form of bronchitis. It left me with a hacking, bloody cough for six months. Around the same time, nearly 19,000 people were evacuated from Yellowknife and large parts of the N.W.T. were on fire.
I was aware that we were in an unprecedented wildfire season, but it's human nature to compartmentalize individual, discrete events into anomalies, and that's exactly what happened to me.
I have a bachelor's degree in marine and freshwater biology and will soon have a master's degree in physical geography. I can speak at length about what the predicted effects of the climate crisis will be on aquatic, terrestrial and coastal ecosystems.
However, I have subconsciously avoided considering what its effect will be on humans, in particular on myself, my loved ones and the communities I live in.
The climate crisis is an existential threat of such magnitude that I mentally freeze. I have ultimately had the privilege of viewing climate change from afar until this summer.
Salt marshes are breathtaking ecosystems and are the focal point of many compelling questions. But my research has started to feel terrifyingly pointless in the face of active freefall towards ecosystem crisis. I used to believe that natural science was the answer to every problem, but I have come to see its limits.
Truthfully, I am incredibly scared for our safety. The key question to me is therefore no longer related to salt marshes or stopping climate change (which I now see as a naive wish), but rather how we can adapt to unforgiving environmental change.
This is where me as a person collides with me as a scientist. In my field, research credibility comes from strict neutrality and calm language. Even by writing this article I risk being perceived as alarmist and biased, possibly for the rest of my career.
But after this summer, I think that scientists like me have a moral duty to let their panic about climate change be seen by the public. I don't understand how to be an engaged researcher while being expected to ignore the fact that I conduct my fieldwork in temperatures unsafe for a human body.
I feel a deep need to translate my work into relevant information that has tangible effects on how Canadians process the climate crisis. As we move into the cooler fall, I won't forget the heat of this summer.
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