Environment & Climate Change: 1) Canada Should Be On “High Alert” For 2024 After Record Wildfire Season: Scientist; 2)Research Finds Climate Change Made Warm Canadian December Twice As Likely
1) Canada Should Be On “High Alert” For 2024 After Record Wildfire Season: Scientist
DROUGHT CONDITIONS AND SOIL MOISTURE LOOK SIMILAR TO AROUND THIS TIME LAST YEAR
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Jan 16th, 2024
Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press
Canada should be on “high alert” for 2024 wildfires, a scientist with the Canadian Forest Service said Friday, as he offered a sweeping view of last year’s record−shattering season.
Research scientist Piyush Jain stopped short of giving a prediction for the upcoming season during Friday’s briefing. But he presented several charts showing certain indicators, such as drought conditions and soil moisture, that look similar to around this time last year.
He also pointed to temperature forecasts that predict a hotter-than-normal start to the wildfire season.
“I do not have a crystal ball,” he said. “But, yeah, I guess most people will be able to piece together that we should be on high alert for 2024.”
Jain spent Friday’s briefing going through a far−reaching and data−centric retrospective of the 2023 wildfire season. More people were evacuated, and more area was burned last year than during any other Canadian wildfire season on record.
Widespread drought conditions, early snowmelt and lower-than-usual precipitation were some drivers of last year’s record−breaking season, he said.
Jain also pointed to research showing how climate change, fuelled by the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, is also contributing to longer and more intense wildfire seasons.
He cited a study put together by a team of scientists, including some of his forest service colleagues, that zeroed in on northern Quebec’s wildfire season. That study found human−caused climate change made it seven times more likely to see a season with the same fire severity as 2023, and doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions.
The wildfires impacted “every single person living in Canada,” and was “seared into our collective consciousness,” he said.
Wildfire smoke choked the skies across Canada, closing schools and shutting down outdoor events. Canadians, per capita, experienced eight days of poor air quality, he said, but just how hazardous that air quality was and how many days it lasted varied drastically from place to place.
He said the Northwest Territories had a “staggering” 44 days with “very poor air quality,” while Toronto had 14 and Vancouver had four.
Parts of northern Alberta spent 135 days under air quality alerts, so many that a new colour had to be added to the colour−coded map tracking those alerts, he said.
Jain presented data showing Canadian wildfires in 2023 burned through more than 15 million hectares, an area larger than the entire state of New York and almost three times larger than Nova Scotia.
That total is about three million hectares less than what had been previously, and widely, reported. He said that’s in part because early estimates can include water bodies and unburned vegetation within the fire perimeter that scientists later identify in more fine−grained analysis.
Quebec led the way with nearly 4.5 million hectares burned, followed by the Northwest Territories, Alberta and British Columbia −− a record for each province and territory.
About 240,000 people were evacuated due to wildfire. Five of the largest wildfire−induced evacuations since 1980 took place last year, including Yellowknife and West Kelowna.
But Jain said there were fewer total fires than the average year. Twenty of the largest fires in 2023 were responsible for half of the total area burned.
Historically, 75 per cent of fires were lightning−caused resulting in 91 per cent of the total area burned. But in 2023, 59 per cent of the fires were caused by lightning, resulting in 93 per cent of the total area burned.
2) Research Finds Climate Change Made Warm Canadian December Twice As Likely
WARMEST DECEMBER IN MORE THAN 50 YEARS
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Jan 16th, 2024
Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
Climate change made Canada’s warmest December in more than 50 years about twice as likely, a temperature anomaly that stood out around the world, a new study has found.
“It really stands out globally,” said Andrew Pershing of Climate Central, a non−profit group of scientists and science journalists based in Princeton, N.J.
“When you start to widen the lens, you really see how unusual it was in Canada.”
While this month’s deep freeze may make it seem like a distant memory, December broke warm temperature records around the country, especially on the Prairies.
On Dec. 6, Alberta alone set seven new records — and not just by a little.
That day, Bow Island in southern Alberta registered 18.6 C, a full 5.8 degrees higher than the previous 1962 mark. Golfers appeared on Calgary courses.
Every province and territory was above normal, but the Prairies went the furthest. Manitoba was 8.6 degrees warmer than usual, Saskatchewan eight degrees and Alberta 7.1 degrees.
This year has seen a strong El Nino, a weather pattern that usually brings warm weather. But that didn’t account for December, Pershing said.
“What we’re seeing is the steady push of climate change, day after day.”
Pershing and his colleagues used the Climate Shift Index to determine the impact of climate change. That index takes a well-established and peer−reviewed methodology to tease out the influence of climate change on each day’s weather.
That index is a common tool for climatologists, said Nathan Gillett, who studies weather attribution at Environment Canada.
“The climate shift index has been around for a while,” he said. “It’s well accepted, generally.”
So−called weather attribution studies are increasingly popular and have looked at the role of climate change in a wide range of global events, including Canada’s recent disastrous wildfire season. For December, Pershing added up the number of days in each province for which the shift index was higher than two, meaning climate change made that day’s temperature at least twice as likely.
Ontario and British Columbia had 11 such days. Manitoba had 10. Quebec had nine. Saskatchewan and Alberta averaged five between them.
That’s not just El Nino, Pershing said. Previous strong El Nino years didn’t produce anything close to what happened in 2023.
“We wouldn’t get the records we saw from El Nino. The records are coming from climate change with El Nino adding a little bit of flavour on top.”
Gillett, who wasn’t involved in the Climate Central study, said the conclusions accord with what he would have expected.
“The results are credible and the conclusions make sense,” he said. “They are borne out by other data I’ve seen recently.”
That comparative banana belt now seems like a long time ago. January temperatures have plunged across the country.
Pershing said the science on the relationship of climate change to cold snaps is still unclear. Some believe the warming Arctic is weakening the jet stream and contributing to events like the current snap, but that’s not conclusive, Pershing said.
Natural variability is still around, said Gillett.
“There is still variability and these kinds of events can still happen. But they’re less likely than they would have been in the absence of human−induced climate change.”
Get used to it, said Pershing — if you can.
“I can go out on these warmer winter days and be both really happy and really creeped out.”
Patricia is the Business Mentor and owner of Grow Vantage and a Past President of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. She applies over 30 years of business experience (from start-up to corporate) to mentor entrepreneurs. Since 2011, she has held over 6,500 coaching and training sessions in-person and online. Through Ask For Directions Training, her entrepreneurial training program (and parent company Grow Vantage), and as a business coach, she works with start-ups who are new (or who have lost traction) to design, launch and grow their businesses. Along with 20 other expert instructors she teaches strategies in marketing, sales, communications, and finance, as well as practical techniques to increase productivity, and manage their businesses. In other words, everything entrepreneurs need to learn to grow and run their businesses successfully, and avoid the costly mistakes they can't even see coming - that lead to delays in growth and getting stuck.
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