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Climate change means more severe weather, more often: Duke

Random and severe weather events are fast becoming the norm as the planet’s climate continues changing, according to an expert at Acadia University.

Dr. David Duke, a professor of environmental history at Acadia University and a Kings County resident, says this year’s June frost that decimated crops like grapes, apples and berries across the Annapolis Valley is among other weather phenomena that we should buckle up and get used to.

Duke says severe weather has always had a long and lasting impact on humans, like massive droughts in the 17th and 18th centuries that destabilized and eventually helped topple China’s Ming dynasty, along with spurring the Thirty Years War in Europe.

In Nova Scotia, people still remember historic weather events like 1816’s cold summer of frosts and snow, the 1869 winter Saxby Gale, and 1954’s hurricane Edna, each of which caused mass devastation.

“The turbulent waters of the [Bay of Fundy] were forced into the narrow channel. Tides rose quickly to record levels, flooding waterfront streets in towns ... Front Street in Wolfville [was] waist deep in water, damaging or destroying homes and businesses,” reads ‘The terrifying Saxby Gale,’ an article by Brian Rafuse written for The Regional Magazine in August 2000, describing some of the damage caused by the gale.

According to Duke, Edna was even worse, and caused $3 million in damage to the Valley’s apple crop.

“This was doubly devastating as it was the first really good crop since the end of the war and farmers were hoping it would re-establish them in European markets that had not been buying due to post-war austerity,” he writes in an email.

Dukes says post-tropical storms and hurricanes like Edna will likely become the most frequent kind of severe weather in Nova Scotia, along with droughts and seasonal instabilities like this year’s June frost.

“It’s instability that is likely to be the hallmark of climate change for much of the rest of this century, leading more generally to warmer temperatures, and so it’s that which we need to prepare for now,” writes Duke.