PREDICTION: There Will Be Weather
The winter of 2013-2014 was a doozy. Jayne MacAulay examines the trends while daring to hope for a long, pleasant summer
DAVE PHILLIPS, senior climatologist for Environment Canada and the go-to guy for anything weatherrelated in this country, always seems upbeat, but this spring no one would have blamed him if he’d covered his ears and bellowed “La, la, la,” as yet another Canadian griped about a winter that just didn’t want to die.
We’d bought into the Canadian Olympic Committee’s “We Are Winter” ad campaign in February, thrilled by our athletes’ medal-winning performances at Sochi, Russia, but by the time I spoke with Phillips in April, Canucks were done – finito – with the chilly season.
“It’s national – complaining about the weather,” he told me in Toronto, where it was still cold and grey. “We’ve seen probably, Canada-wide, the 24th coldest winter in 67 years [December–February]. When you break it down, it’s even worse than that in some areas. In Toronto it’s been the coldest [in 36 years]. And Winnipeg, my god! There’s no really major city in the world that’s as cold as Winnipeg – it was the coldest in about 35 years.”
But does a long cold winter mean summer will be a bust? And will next winter be an encore of that hi bern is horribilis?
Environment Canada’s wizards don’t rely on crystal balls or chicken entrails in assessing what the weather has in store across the country, preferring the more scientific approach of computer-generated weather modelling. So far, Phillips seems optimistic about the models he’s seen for this summer – with some caveats born of a 40-year career in the weather forecasting business. “There are three possibilities for a forecast: it’s showing it could either be warmer than normal; it could be colder than normal, or it could be something in be- tween, which we call seasonable, normal or a typical kind of summer,” he says. “There’s good news – if you like your summer warm or seasonable: we’re not showing any large regions that’ll be colder than normal. Confidence for warmer than normal is highest in British Columbia and the Prairies, and in Atlantic Canada. For central Canada temperatures began coolish but improve, to normal for July and August. And no long lead forecasts say anything about severe weather.”
Let’s hope as you read this, you are basking in warmth or revelling in the exact amount of bumper crop-producing rain you desire. But this is Canada, and as Phillips, explained, no forecast can predict just how extreme the weather will be. “We are the second most tornado-prone country in the world. We get between two and three million lightning hits–every five seconds on average there’s a lightning strike somewhere in Canada in summer,” he said, noting that Canadians shouldn’t leave home without check-
“Will we grouse about sweltering heat after experiencing this past winter? ‘Probably,’ says Phillips”
ing a weather forecast. “There are surprises, but there are no sneak attacks. You don’t get thunderstorms or tornadoes from blue skies,” he says.
Even so, taken with extreme weather events across the country, last summer’s epic flooding in Alberta, Canada’s costliest natural disaster – followed by flash flooding three weeks later in Toronto, and later, the long winter, were enough to spook the most inveterate Canuck weather-checker. So was all this just jumped-up weather or the result of climate change?
Dr. John M.R. Stone, adjunct professor in geography and environmental studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, held several senior positions within the Canadian government, heading up research into climate change issues and its threat to Canada. He also served on several international scientific bodies, and is an author of the latest assessment report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Established in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the IPCC has hundreds of scientists rigorously assessing the most recent research on climate change and its impact.
“Weather,” Stone explains, “is what we have today. Climate is the average of that over a significant period of time.” Or more simply: “You buy your clothes according to the climate, but you choose what you want to wear every day according to the weather.”
Climate is the big interlocking puzzle of jet streams, melting Antarctic ice sheets, warming oceans, polar vortexes, greenhouse gases and
many other factors such as solar radiation. Climate requires a big-picture perspective, he suggests, not a limited focus on one piece of geography or time period.
Stone says, “We believe that we can expect an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events. Most of those will be, for example, to warmer extremes, but you will still see the occasional extreme in the other way, as we had in Canada for the winter.”
Turn up the heat on a pot of water and nothing seems to happen at first. Then small bubbles appear and soon get larger. “As you increase the heat they get bigger and the whole thing gets more violent,” he says. “That’s a little like the atmosphere and like the climate – that as it gets warmer you get much more variability, much more violent weather.”
The IPCC’s recent Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) stated, “Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and changes in some climate extremes … It is extremely likely [IPCC italics] that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” This, from cautious, clear-eyed scientists.
“Climate change is real. It is happening now – and it’s a threat to us,” Stone says. “We’re going to have to shift from energy sources which are primarily based on burning fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind and hydro and the like.” A study released in February 2014 by Globe International (legislators from more than 80 countries) reported that Canada is one of four nations that have “no comprehensive federal climate change legislation.” Of 66 countries involved, it’s Mexico and China leading in developing climate or energy-related laws.
But Stone remains optimistic. “We have experience in investing today for a better future,” he notes. “There’s money to be saved in not using fossil fuels … in using energy more efficiently.” And he’s convinced that as people realize the health, energy, security and agricultural implications, people would act – raising the issue with politicians, for example. “If we don’t do that, politicians don’t actually know that we think this is an issue,” he says.
As we’ve witnessed, weather in Canada can be wild and frightening and come with huge price tags. We will have more floods, Stone warns, so we’ll have to avoid building in floodplains; communities will need to build or upgrade wastewater systems to handle sudden heavy rains. Hotter summers beget forest fires, so locating buildings a safe distance from forest and bush is advisable. Finding strategies to keep cool is especially important for anyone ailing and for older people.
Haze and poor air quality often accompany heat and humidity in eastern Canada, particularly Ontario, Dave Phillips says. A warmer and more humid summer can create comfort issues and subsequently, high energy bills – as well as power more storms, he points out. And will we grouse about the sweltering heat after experiencing this past winter? “The answer is probably yes,” Phillips concedes, “because we always love to complain about the weather.”
Yet he does have good news for this year’s winter-weary. An El Niño is brewing. The phenomenon occurs irregularly off the coast of Peru and Ecuador and has a global influence on weather. Winter temperatures tend to be warmer in Canada during an El Niño. “Next winter won’t be as tough as this winter,” he says. “Even if you’re getting a bummer of a summer, you can at least feel pretty assured that the numbers seem to stack up – next winter won’t be as long, as intense as this year.” But then what will Canadians talk about?