The nation’s top climatologist claims that the Earth is warming up so much that severe weather events involving heavy precipitation are becoming more likely.
Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said that Canada should be anticipating more heavy downpours in the near future, citing a recent report by the US Global Change Research Program that observed an increased frequency in downpours in the US.
“This is one of the fallouts of a warmer world, and one that will be more troublesome than not, because of the fact that we’re not equipped to handle the heavier dose of rain,” Phillips told
Global News. “It’s something we’ve known for centuries: every time the world gets warmer, the atmosphere holds more moisture. A one-degree warming allows the atmosphere to hold, say, 12% more precipitation - more rainfall or snow.”
According to Phillips, the Earth has warmed up by almost a degree in the last 135 years. He also noted that parts of Canada have warmed up by two-three degrees in half that time.
Edward A. Parson, a faculty co-director at UCLA’s Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment, told
Global News that large continental areas (like Canada) warm up more than the global average.
“It’s a rough rule of thumb, a mid-to-high latitude, big continental area like Canada, it warms one-and-a-half to two times as much as the global average,” Parson explained.
Warmer conditions could lead to inclement weather; while one area experiences drought, flooding could occur in another region. Tropical storms become stronger given the warmer temperatures and the number of tornadoes could swell as a result.
Phillips argued that there is more than enough evidence to prove that Canada’s weather is getting worse due to rising temperatures.
He cited the July 2013 storm that unloaded between 97 and 125mm of rainfall in the span of two hours. He also pointed out the rains last July that brought 88mm of rainfall in two hours to an area that was recently devastated by wildfire, and the three-day storm that hit Windsor in September that caused $100 million in insured damage.
“When it rains, it gives you a belly washer as opposed to just a nice gentle slow motion rain,” he said.
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