Recent heavy rainfall and flooding likely the shape of things to come

WHOEVER’S IN CHARGE OF the adage about April showers forgot to flip over the calendar page, as the first week of the fifth month brought more rain than we typically see in all of May. While sunnier this week, temperatures were still well below seasonal, not great for the May flowers that are supposed to come along.

Luckily, flooding wasn’t really an issue here, unlike what’s still being dealt with in Eastern Ontario and Quebec.

The region is usually spared such hardships – you have to go back more than four decades to the Cambridge flood of 1974 to find something on a large scale. We’re also fairly immune from the hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes we see elsewhere on the globe. And while tornados are a possibility, past occurrences haven’t come with the same frequency or wrought the kind of destruction we see in, say, the U.S. Midwest.

We’re not immune, however, from the impacts of a shifting climate, including more extreme weather.

If climate models are on target, we can expect more extreme weather days ahead, even putting aside the human contribution to global warming/climate change.

Predicted changes would significantly decrease the duration of the annual snow season and lengthen the growing season. They could increase the frequency and severity of extreme heat events in summer.

If the models hold, we can expect more than just rising temperatures. Greater impacts could include changes in precipitation patterns, in soil moisture, and possibly in the frequency and intensity of severe weather events.

Changes in weather patterns may affect the frequency and intensity of pollution episodes.

Increased heat stress, and possible increases in the number or severity of episodes of poor air quality and extreme weather events could all have a negative effect on human health. A warmer climate may facilitate migration of disease-carrying organisms from other regions.

Ontario falls prey to a number of natural hazards: drought, heat waves, floods, rain, snow and ice storms, tornadoes, and even hurricanes, although they’re rare. Small changes in average climate conditions are expected to generate significant changes in extreme events.

Experts anticipate fewer extremely cold days and more extremely hot days and more severe thunderstorms, which can cause injury and property damage.

Staying out of the climate change debate, the insurance industry is nonetheless spending a considerable amount of time crunching the numbers – assessing risk is their business, after all – and they see plenty of reasons to worry. Lately, the industry has been more proactive, essentially urging mitigation efforts through pitches to government and the public alike – you may have seen the television commercials.

Insurance companies, which top no one’s mostpopular list, aren’t doing so for the public’s benefit per se. The industry doesn’t care about you, it cares about its profits. In the ideal world, it collects ever-increasing premiums and pays out nothing, with government forcing consumers to keep paying nonetheless.

But its goals somewhat align with the public’s in that most people want to avoid making claims as much as insurers want to avoid paying them.

Glenn McGillivray of the industry-funded Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction notes most of the issues around flooding and subsequent claims come from poor decisions made in the past, from allowing homes to be built on vulnerable land to building codes that don’t recognize changing risks.

We don’t seem to have learned anything from past floods, he argues in an opinion piece this week in the Globe and Mail.

“First, a homeowner locates next to the river, oftentimes because of the view (meaning a personal choice is being made). Many of these homes are of high value.

“Then the snow melts, the ice jams or the rain falls and the flood comes. Often, as is the case now, the rain is characterized by the media as being incredible, far outside the norm. Then a scientific or engineering analysis later shows that what happened was not very exceptional,” he opines.

“These events are not caused by the rain, they are caused by poor land-use decisions, among other public-policy foibles. This is what is meant when some say there are no such things as natural catastrophes, only man-made disasters.

“Finally, the province steps in with disaster assistance then seeks reimbursement from the federal government through the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements. In any case, whether provincial or federal, taxpayers are left holding the bag.”

Most of the predictions based on climate modelling show more changes coming, none for the better. AGW skeptic or otherwise, there’s no denying the climate is in flux, and that we’ll have to deal with the consequences. Just like the residents of Eastern Ontario and Quebec just now.

So, what are we doing to prepare? Not enough, according to Blair Feltmate, chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Project at the University of Waterloo.

In a report last fall looking at the flood preparedness of Canada’s provinces, he awarded an average grade of C- (at B-, Ontario was actually the highest ranking in the country).

As someone who studies such eventualities, Feltmate is well-placed to make predictions, and the outlook is grim.

Severe weather is on the rise across Canada. Events that used to happen every 40 years can now be expected to happen every six. Homes are damaged more frequently by heavy rain-

fall, hail damage, storm surges, tornadoes and hurricanes. The once-in-acentury flooding in southern Alberta in 2013, which costs billions, will likely reoccur much sooner than 2113. The same with disasters elsewhere. There’s no denying the devastation, and the huge economic impact.

“As noted by the office of the Auditor General of Canada, climate change scientists expect severe weather events to become increasingly more frequent and intense in the coming years. This will have significant physical, social and economic impacts, resulting in long-term costs and disruption of everyday life. The federal government spent more on recovering from large-scale natural disasters over the past six years, than in the previous 39 years combined,” reads Feltmate’s report.

Despite the warnings, perhaps the largest barrier to any major change is human nature: we’re quite content with our lives today, and see no need to change that for some potential long-term benefit, one that’s unlikely to materialize in our lifetimes.

Interestingly enough, should the forecasted problems arise, it won’t matter at that point if the climate changes are naturally occurring or manmade: we’ll still have to cope with such things as rising sea levels, increased storm activity, desertification and other threats to farmland, to name a few. Expect the unpredictability to continue.