We will have to head west rather than north if we want to escape the heatwave next summer.
Environment Canada released its forecasts for the summer of 2024 on Tuesday and they “with certainty” report temperatures above normal almost everywhere in the country except in British Columbia and the Yukon, where temperatures will be close to normal or even lower than this.
As for knowing whether it will be necessary to bring out the umbrellas or the watering can, very smart person could come forward. The federal agency is in fact unable to predict anything in terms of precipitation for Quebec, the Maritimes and most of Ontario.
“Climate models have not been able to make reliable predictions in these regions. Taking all of this into account, there is not really a clear signal for the summer season,” explained meteorologist Armel Castellan when presenting these forecasts.
“Seasonal forecasts carry a high degree of uncertainty, particularly regarding precipitation,” he said. For what ? “The atmosphere is a fluid that is very dynamic and even chaotic. It’s really impossible to have a clear signal when you want to know where the major events are that will cause a lot of rain, a lot of snow. »
At most, Mr. Castellan suggests a possibility of below-normal precipitation in western Ontario, northern Manitoba, southern Alberta and almost all of Saskatchewan.
Extreme weather and climate change
After last year’s devastating and unprecedented forest fires, Environment and Climate Change Canada has also refined its tools to inform the public about air quality. These tools allow citizens to know the air quality in their area and the concentration of fine particles found there, among other things. We also offer maps that show where possible plumes of smoke from forest fires are located and where they are heading.
For Environment Canada scientists, there is no doubt that global warming is almost entirely caused by human activity.
These changes are the source of extreme weather events – including forest fires, but also floods and violent storms – which have pushed the cost of claims on an upward curve for several years.
“Human-caused climate change explains almost all of the warming observed in Canada,” said Nathan Gillet, scientific researcher at Environment and Climate Change Canada, during the press briefing.
Most affected northern regions
It should be noted that the map of the evolution of temperatures in Canada between 1948 and 2016 shows that it is the northernmost regions, namely Nunavik in Quebec and Nunavut, which have experienced the greatest increases in their summer temperatures.
The cause of accelerated northern warming is multifactorial, explained Nathan Gillet, starting with the snow cover in the Far North.
“The snow reflects the sun and if the snow melts, the earth has more sun. That’s a feedback that increases warming. Also, there are changes in planetary circulation [de l’air] which contribute to increasing warming in the Arctic, in the North. There are several mechanisms that contribute,” said Mr. Gillet.
Armel Castellan, for his part, took the opportunity to recall that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between weather and climate, a distinction which is based on the time scale, he said.
“What the atmosphere does today, day to day, is the weather, the weather, what we experience and feel. Climate in this context is the average of weather conditions over a 30-year period. Some would say that the climate is what we expect, while [la météo], that’s what we get. »