Spring is here - after Canada's warmest winter on record
Spring has officially ar‐ rived, after a winter that didn't feel much like one.
The months of December, January and February were the warmest on record in Canada, part of a pattern of unprecedented temperatures across the globe over the past year.
David Phillips, senior cli‐ matologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, said this past winter could be described as a "cancelled season."
"It often arrives on Hal‐ loween and leaves at Easter, and we kept waiting for this one to arrive," he said.
On average, the temper‐ ature over the three-month period was 5.2 C warmer than the norm since Canada began keeping records in 1948, said Phillips.
The previous record was in 2009-10, when it was 4.1 C above the norm. The United States also recorded its warmest winter on record.
The mild weather had a wide range of impacts on everything from winter sports to the economy to the natural world.
Ski resorts in some re‐ gions had a patchy season, outdoor skating rinks were unreliable as the temper‐ ature fluctuated and ice roads that serve northern communities were slow to open.
In B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories, more than 100 fires burned through the winter - leading to worries about another wildfire season ahead.
A report by Climate Cen‐ tral, a U.S.-based research group, tried to determine to what extent the warm tem‐ peratures in December, Janu‐ ary and February could be at‐ tributed to fossil fuel-driven climate change. It concluded a month or more of abnor‐ mal warmth was made at least five times more likely.
Copernicus, the European Union's climate monitoring institute, found February was the hottest on record around the world, making it the ninth consecutive month of record temperatures.
A year of records
The balmy winter caps off a record-setting year around the world.
The World Meteorological Organization confirmed Tuesday that 2023 was the warmest year on record, with an estimated global average near-surface temperature at 1.45 C above the pre-indus‐ trial baseline.
"The year 2023 set new records for every single cli‐ mate indicator," WMO Secre‐ tary-General Celeste Saulo told a news conference Tues‐ day.
"The scientific knowledge about climate change has ex‐ isted for more than five decades, and yet, we missed an entire generation of op‐ portunity. It is imperative that our actions today are based on the welfare of fu‐ ture generations rather than short-term economic inter‐ ests."
In addition to the temper‐ ature record, the WMO said records were once again "broken, and in some cases smashed" when it comes to ocean heat, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice loss and glacier retreat.
On an average day in 2023, nearly one-third of the global ocean was gripped by a marine heat wave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems.
What's next?
The presence of an El Niño, a cyclical global weather pat‐ tern, contributed to the rapid rise in temperatures over the past year, the WMO said.
But the long-term trend toward a hotter planet is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
According to the WMO, the 10-year average temper‐ ature between 2014 and 2023 was 1.2 C above the 1850-1900 average.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, noted the spike in global temperatures began before El Niño took hold.
He said it's difficult to predict what will happen next, after what amounted to a "crazy year."
"Our confidence in our predictions right now is pret‐ ty low," he said.
Regardless, the planet is on pace to keep getting hot‐ ter, beyond the 1.5 C target set in Paris in 2015, Schmidt said.
The WMO said the ob‐ served concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - reached record levels in 2022. Realtime data from specific loca‐ tions show a continued in‐ crease in 2023, according to the report.
"We haven't cut our emis‐ sions anything like enough to stabilize temperatures," Schmidt said.
"Only when we get our emissions down to near zero will we be able to say, 'OK, well, that's the new norm,' but we haven't got there yet."
El Niño is expected to con‐ tinue to have a warming ef‐ fect in Canada through the spring. But Phillips said a colder winter is likely next year, as El Niño retreats.
"It's up and down, but the trend is clearly up," Phillips said.