Change is in the air

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/02/2024 (585 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s an interesting time.

On Monday, much of Cape Breton, N.S. was in the grips of a slow-moving days-long blizzard that could end up dropping a massive 150 centimetres of snow.

By Monday morning, in southern California, a storm had already dropped a month’s rain in less than 24 hours. In some places, the storm brought more than 10 inches of rain. The effects of the combined bomb-cyclone/atmospheric river had left more than 600,000 Californians without power, with the U.S. National Weather Service issuing dire warnings about flooding and soaked ground causing landslides. Early Monday, 38 million people in the states of California and Arizona were facing flood alerts.

Meanwhile, parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan are in major drought conditions with virtually no snow cover whatsoever. The Alberta drought risk and management plans for this year are simple. In early January, Alberta Environment and Protected Areas put it like this: “Prepare for extreme drought, hope for snow and rain.”

In Manitoba, we’ve had a decidedly peculiar January, including days so warm they’ve broken long-standing temperature records. Twenty-four individual temperature records were broken in this province on Jan. 31 alone, with several places seeing temperatures as much as 20 degrees higher than seasonal norms.

February has started the same way, and the unseasonably warm weather is expected to linger until the weekend. We’ve already seen the start of the Winnipeg March/April pothole season.

Now, each of these things as a point on a chart is simply weather.

A moment in time. A coalescence of environmental conditions, as it were.

And every time a weather record is broken, it’s easy enough to say that the last record was only incrementally overtaken by the new record.

But when there’s an established pattern, worldwide, of regularly broken weather records, that’s something else again.

It’s pretty clear at that point you’re talking about climate change.

What we’re seeing now has been expected by climate scientists for years.

Hotter weather — but also colder, as a weakening jet stream allows Arctic air to dip south, something that happened just a few weeks ago in the southwestern U.S.

More extreme weather of all sorts.

Warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the air, creating issues of increased rain in changing patterns of intensity, duration and frequency.

It means a new wrinkle to be taken into consideration by all levels of government. By the federal government, which is often to respond to and finance repairs after major weather events. By provincial governments, who set provincial construction standards, establish floodplain mapping, provide emergency measures organizations and so on.

And most of all, by municipalities, who have to design, build and maintain the on-the-ground and in-the-ground infrastructure. They have to get the water to your door and your sewage out of your house without backups: they have to prepare for extreme heat and extreme cold, for drought and flood.

As temperatures change, even things as simple as asphalt formulations have to change. As do catch basin sizes, drainage pipe sizes, snowplow fleets sizes, warming centres, cooling centres — the list goes on and on and on.

Everyone has to take the future into account — last year’s culvert simply might not be large enough for next year’s storm. We’re in the land of mitigation now: it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be cheap.

It’s clear it’s not going to be the same as the past. After all, it’s the past’s records that are being broken.

Change is not just coming. It’s here.