Climate change in Canada

In Canada, mitigation of anthropogenic climate change and global warming is being addressed more seriously by the provinces than by the federal government. The 2015 election signals greater federal leadership as noted in Canada's National Statement at COP21, making climate change a top priority, and pledging actions based on the best scientific evidence and advice. According to the 2019 report Canada's Changing Climate Report (CCCR) which was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed by 1.7 C since 1948. The rate of warming is even higher in Canada's North, in the Prairies and northern British Columbia.Canada's climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government.It’s like they don’t want to hear about science anymore. They want politics to reflect economics 100 per cent - economics being only what you can sell, not what you can save. In Canada, mitigation of anthropogenic climate change and global warming is being addressed more seriously by the provinces than by the federal government. The 2015 election signals greater federal leadership as noted in Canada's National Statement at COP21, making climate change a top priority, and pledging actions based on the best scientific evidence and advice. According to the 2019 report Canada's Changing Climate Report (CCCR) which was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed by 1.7 C since 1948. The rate of warming is even higher in Canada's North, in the Prairies and northern British Columbia. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), formerly Environment Canada, is a federal department with the stated role of protecting the environment, conserving national natural heritage, and also providing weather and meteorological information. According to ECCC 'warming over the 20th century is indisputable and largely due to human activities' adding 'Canada's rate of warming is about twice the global rate: a 2°C increase globally means a 3 to 4ºC increase for Canada'. Berkeley Earth has reported that 2015 was 'unambiguously' the warmest year on record across the world, with the Earth’s temperature more than 1.0 C (1.8 F) above the 1850-1900 average. ECCC lists impacts of climate change consistent with global changes. Temperature-related changes include longer growing season, more heat waves and fewer cold spells, thawing permafrost, earlier river ice break-up, earlier spring runoff, and earlier budding of trees. Meteorological changes include an increase in precipitation and more snowfall in northwest Arctic. Highlighting that 'Warming is not uniform ...(the) Arctic is warming even faster', ECCC notes 2012 had the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice on record up to 2014. ECCC's Climate Research Division summarized annual precipitation changes to support biodiversity assessments by the Canadian Councils of Resource Ministers. Evaluating records up to 2007 they observed: 'Precipitation has generally increased over Canada since 1950 with the majority of stations with significant trends showing increases. The increasing trend is most coherent over northern Canada where many stations show significant increases. There is not much evidence of clear regional patterns in stations showing significant changes in seasonal precipitation except for significant decreases which tend to be concentrated in the winter season over southwestern and southeastern Canada. While the previous sentence might be technically correct in part, all seasons show increased precipitation in Canada, especially in the Winter, Spring, and Fall months. Also, increasing precipitation over the Arctic appears to be occurring in all seasons except summer.' ECCC climate specialists have assessed trends in short-duration rainfall patterns using Engineering Climate Datasets: 'Short-duration (5 minutes to 24 hours) rainfall extremes are important for a number of purposes, including engineering infrastructure design, because they represent the different meteorological scales of extreme rainfall events.' A 'general lack of a detectable trend signal', meaning no overall change in extreme,short-duration rainfall patterns was observed in the single station analysis. In relation to design criteria used for traditional water management and urban drainage design practice (e.g., Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) statistics), the evaluation 'shows that fewer than 5.6% and 3.4% of the stations have significant increasing and decreasing trends, respectively, in extreme annual maximum single location observation amounts.' On a regional basis, southwest and the east (Newfoundland) coastal regions generally showed significant increasing regional trends for 1- and 2-hour extreme rainfall durations. Decreasing regional trends for 5 to 15 minute rainfall amounts were observed in the St. Lawrence region of southern Quebec and in the Atlantic provinces. Climate change melt ice and increases the mobility of the ice. In May and June 2017 dense ice – up to 8 metres (25ft) thick – was in the waters off the northern coast of Newfoundland, trapping fishing boats and ferries. In 2000 Canada ranked ninth out of 186 countries in terms of per capita greenhouse gas emissions without taking into account land use changes. In 2005 it ranked eighth. In 2009, Canada was ranked seventh in total greenhouse gas emissions behind Germany and Japan. In 2018 of all the G20 countries, Canada was second only to Saudi Arabia for per capita emissions. Canada is a large country with a low population density, so transportation – often in cold weather when fuel efficiency drops – is a big part of the economy. In 2016, 25 per cent of Canada's greenhouse gases (GHG)s come from trucks, trains, airplanes and cars . The largest source of GHG emissions accounting for 26% of the national total, are from the oil and gas sector, driven by high emissions from tar sands projects. According to Canada's Energy Outlook, the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) report, NRCan estimates that Canada's GHG emissions will increase by 139 million tonnes between 2004 and 2020, with more than a third of the total coming from petroleum production and refining. Upstream emissions will decline slightly, primarily from gas field depletion and from increasing production of coalbed methane, which requires less processing than conventional natural gas. Meanwhile, emissions from unconventional resources and refining will soar. However, the estimates for carbon emissions differ amongst Environment Canada, World Resources Institute and the International Energy Agency by nearly 50%. The reasons for the differences have not been determined.