Prairies to feel brunt of climate change

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This article was published 04/04/2019 (2524 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Climate change will bring more unpredictability to southwestern Manitoba’s weather, meaning more floods, hotter summers and warmer winters, according to a report from the federal government.

Canada’s Changing Climate Report, released Monday, urges action to reduce the long-term effects of climate change. The report traces average temperature between 1948 and 2016 and shows the climate in the Prairies has already gotten much warmer.

Over the last 70 years, the average temperate has risen almost two degrees and 3.1 degrees in the winter. In that same time, the amount of rain and snowfall has climbed seven per cent, a major factor in flooding.

Barrie Bonsal, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada who helped write the report, said the Prairies are going to see the biggest swing in average temperatures. The area is right in the middle of the North American continent, meaning we are further away from the oceans that help moderate temperatures.

The report outlines two scenarios for climate change’s impact on Canada. The first if the world is able to meet the targets set out in the Paris Agreement and the second is for “business as usual.”

The two scenarios outline different severities of the impact of climate change on the country. While Bonsal said both scenarios mean a longer growing season for Westman farmers, that might not necessarily be a good thing.

“It really depends. If we have a longer growing season you might be able to plant earlier or diversify in crops, but really what the limiting factor will be is how much water you have…. In the high emissions scenario it’s projected we’ll have drier summers on the Prairies.”

That could mean more crops withering in the ground, meaning financial losses for people working in agriculture.

David Greenwood, a professor in the department of biology at Brandon University, said it’s already getting harder and harder to predict weather patterns in the Prairies.

“For the last three years we’ve got this seesaw of unpredictability where you can have a dry hot summer or you can have more snowy warmer winter but you can have —like we just had —a much colder, more traditional Prairie winter, so that variability seems to be increasing.”

That uncertainty isn’t limited to temperatures, it is also affecting the amount of rainfall the region can expect, as well as its intensity.

“We seem to be going through these long periods of calm weather with no rain and suddenly it rains for two days and we get floods, that unpredictability is probably the big story in the next decade or so.

Floods are going to become much more a part of everyday life. Brandon saw significant flooding in both 2009 and 2014 and the Red River Valley is expected to reach near-record water levels later this month. Flooding won’t be confined to the spring thaw anymore, he said, as people could see more summer floods from huge storms.

“Calgary got hit a few years ago now, so you get the long periods without big thunderstorms and then —Bam— we’ve got this big system that comes in and dumps a summer’s worth of rain in 24 hours.”

Peter Whittington, a Brandon University professor in the department of geography and environment, said in an email that hot summers could make floods worse. When the ground gets very dry it can’t absorb water as well, resulting in more runoff and pooling in low-lying areas.

This presents a problem for municipal infrastructure, which often isn’t built to deal with the type of weather climate change could bring. Greenwood said municipalities need upgrade storm drains and drainage to deal with sudden deluges of water.

Farmers could also be hit with new pests affecting their crops. Warmer winters mean less will be killed off during the cold temperatures and the climate will be suitable for insects that prefer the heat. Non-farmers will also have to worry about new bugs bringing diseases that previously weren’t an issue.

“No one talked about ticks; now ticks are everywhere and of course they carry disease like Lyme disease,” Greenwood said. “Some of those mosquitos we didn’t have before, we have new mosquitos and some of those are carrying diseases we’re not thinking about.”

The bottom line is that countries around the world have to take quick action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including how it might impact Manitoba.

“This is here and it’s now, the time to talk about ‘Is it real or not?’ is long since passed. The time is here that we’re facing significant costs across society, whether it’s the cost of your insurance policy or the cost of being a farmer. … We can’t continue to stick our heads in the sand.”

» dmay@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @DrewMay_