When Danny Blair presents this type of weather,” a bulb is triggered in people’s heads. Convert the projections into places, and the places are what people understand, “said Blair, a professor of geography at Winnipeg University and co -director of the Prairie Climate Center.” These analogues also give us the opportunity to learn from other people who are already facing the stress of a climate that is projected to have in the decades that are coming. “
For Christopher McCray, a climate scientist at Ouranos, this type of analysis is also useful adaptation tools. “People who work for the city of Montreal or Toronto can look at the analogues and can potentially go and talk to professionals who work in those places at this time and ask them: what kind of infrastructure does it have to handle the climate it currently has? Because one day, we could need to handle that climate,” he added.
However, Canada is vast, and its landscapes are diverse. CBC news analysis cannot capture all nuances of its future climate. The elevation, the surrounding geography and the proximity to large bodies of water also shape what Canadians experience in their communities.
Extreme events such as hurricanes, cyconic swells and atmospheric rivers in this visual representation are also missing, said Sabine Dietz, executive director of Climatlantic. “And all this is worrying because in most of our coastal communities, we have so many low areas, and people, of course, build along the coast, including a great critical infrastructure.”
But still, scientists agree that some general trends can be drawn. In the grasslands, an agricultural power, winters are already warming up, which has some benefits, such as a longer growth season. “But there are some real disadvantages,” Blair said. “Having less snow cover in winter than is available to melt to recharge the soil in spring is a real problem. As summers heat up, evapotranspiration increases the amount of loss of water from the surface. And it is not expected that rainfall is not expected to increase both in summer. For any climatologist who screams it is left to drought.”
In southern Ontario and Quebec, strong rain events will be more frequent and intense. “We have seen many urban floods in recent years because our drainage infrastructure was built considering a climate of the past,” McCray said. “For example, the remains of Hurricane Debby last summer ended up being the most expensive natural disaster in the history of Quebec. We received 154 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, and the previous record was 94 [mm]. We defeat the album for a lot, and we will see more and more of this type of event. “
To face these new climatic challenges, Canadians have to adapt, says Blair. “We are not stopping climate change. We need to live more intelligently and prepare for the climate that comes to us.”
“But we must also take into account that collectively, we need to reduce our emissions,” McCray said. “We can see it on its map of analogues: there is a big difference between the scenarios. Therefore, each ton of CO2 that we do not put in the atmosphere will slightly reduce the heating and the effects of that warming.”
Methodology
Temperature and precipitation projections for summer are the averages 2071-2100 of the CMIP6 (climatic scenarios of the intercomparration project of the phase 6). CMIP is an international scientific collaboration under the United Nations World Nations Climate Research Program.[!->[!–>methodology.
