Change is in the air
Cindy Day calls 'climate awakening' biggest weather story of 2019
Cindy Day is used to Atlantic Canadians chatting up the weather, but lately Saltwire’s chief meteorologist hears them talking a lot about the change in climate. And that, to her, is big news. “I feel the biggest weather story across all of the country, but certainly Atlantic Canada as well, is sort of not a weather event itself but just our climate awakening,’’ Day said in a yearend interview with the media.
“I think people in the past year have really stopped to rethink what we’re doing to the planet and maybe Greta (Thunberg) has a lot to do with that. I mean she has people around the world taking note.’’
Thunberg, the teen activist from Sweden who was named Time magazine’s person of the year for 2019, was lauded by the influential publication for starting an environmental campaign in August 2018 that became a global movement.
“I think that climate awakening – the fact that Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world…make our climate our Number One story,’’ said Day.
“Regardless of where I go, people talk about the weather and almost in the same breath they say: ‘You know, it never was like this before.’ So, we really are seeing changes to our climate…we are creating change that is not good.’’
Hurricane Dorian was a powerful and devastating example of climate change delivering a mighty blow.
Day is not surprised many newspapers picked the major weather event as the story of the year for 2019.
“In terms of weather impact in Atlantic Canada, it was significant,’’ she said.
“I think it was chosen also based on the fact that the storm itself, not just when it moved into Canadian waters, was such an unusual storm. It was one of the most powerful storms ever in the Atlantic basin.’’
Technically, Dorian was done as a hurricane when it landed in the Maritimes, but as a post-tropical storm it was still more damaging than 2003's hurricane Juan. Winds grew to hurricane strength, and the storm was spread out over a larger area than Juan.
Juan, said Day, made Atlantic
Canadians aware of the potential for a mighty harmful wallop pummeling the region. Dorian was a more recent, and even bigger, heads up.
“Because the sea surface temperatures have warmed, storms coming up into Canadian waters are more intense. So, when they do make landfall…as Dorian did just west of Halifax, there’s a lot of energy in that storm system… so it will race across Nova Scotia and bring heavier weather to P.E.I. than it would have maybe 30 or 40 years ago.’’
While Dorian hit P.E.I. hard and there were other significant wind storms hitting the province, overall the temperature and wind profiles for the province were pretty typical, said Day.
“We had a very prolonged spring, and wet for the most part,’’ she noted.
“Not a great deal of sunshine, but when summer kicked in, it turned out to be a pretty fair summer that lingered well into fall.’’
“I feel the biggest weather story across all of the country, but certainly Atlantic Canada as well, is sort of not a weather event itself but just our climate awakening.’’
- Cindy Day