Extreme weather means more flooding; more preparedness issues
THE ROLLERCOASTER WEATHER WE’RE EXPERIENCING provided more than a little bit of rain, including thunderstorms, that combined with March’s snow cover to provide ideal conditions for flooding. The GRCA issued a few flood warnings/watches over the weekend alone.
If you live in, say, West Montrose, flooding is top of mind every spring. For the most part, this area doesn’t have the flooding concerns that have become huge in coastal areas. In that vein, it’s no surprise British Columbia tops the list when it comes to Canadians most worried about severe weather and flooding.
A new national survey found 73 per cent of BC respondents had such worries, higher than the average of 58 per cent Canada-wide. Ontario was bang on that 58 per cent figure.
Flooding is a genuine risk. It accounted for 40 per cent of weather-related catastrophes in Canada since 1970, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Flooding is Canada’s greatest climate-related risk. More than 1.5 million households are highly exposed to flooding, according to the final report of the Task Force on Flood Insurance and Relocation, which was issued last summer.
That’s what prompted the federal government’s inclusion in last week’s budget some $31.7 million over three years for a flood insurance program. The goal is protecting households at high risk of flooding that don’t have access to adequate or affordable insurance. The new program will consider damage from storm surge, as experienced across Atlantic Canada during Hurricane Fiona, riverfront flooding, as experienced during the eastern Canada floods in 2017 and 2019, and urban overland flooding.
“This would include offering reinsurance through a federal Crown corporation and a separate insurance subsidy program,” the budget document said.
The timing is not random, as flooding is one of the problems likely to get worse as we experience more extreme weather due to climate change.
“Recent trends are exacerbating both the flood hazard, as well as increasing Canada’s exposure and vulnerability to flooding. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency, severity and variability of all types of flooding (pluvial, fluvial and coastal) in the coming decades. At the same time, Canada’s exposure to flooding is growing as a result of increasing housing, infrastructure development, and asset concentration in floodprone areas,” notes the report from the Task Force on Flood Insurance and Relocation.
The region is usually spared such hardships – you have to go back almost five 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 US 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 most-popular 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.
We seem destined for more flooding this year, with more to come as the years go by.
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.
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 rainfall, hail damage, storm surges, tornadoes and hurricanes. Once-ina-century flooding events such as the one 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.
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.