The United Nations World Water Development Report on Mountains and glaciers: Water towers
Session 2: Cooperation and participation for preserving mountains and glaciers: Focus on Europe and North America
September 17, 2025
15:00 – 16:30 CET
Wildfire ash is accelerating glacier melt in the Canadian Rockies
Andrea Woo
The Globe and Mail
September 5, 2025
As the helicopter turned toward Peyto Glacier, located in the Park Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, John Pomeroy and his team of scientists gasped.
Prof. Pomeroy, a distinguished professor and director of the Global Water Futures Observatories at the University of Saskatchewan, has studied the ice mass in Banff National Park since 2008, visiting several times a year to adjust weather stations and photograph changes.
He is familiar with the glacier’s rapid melting. It retreats tens of metres per year – 80 metres in 2021 alone. But on the helicopter ride last September, he was stunned to see how much it had transformed since even his previous visit…
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Let’s both celebrate – and worry about – our Great Lakes on World Lake Day
John Smol, Sapna Sharma and Steven Cooke
The Globe and Mail
August 27, 2025
Canada is blessed with over nine million lakes, leading to the perception that we have endless freshwater resources. However, Canadian lakes – like lakes around the world – are under increasing environmental threats from multiple stressors, such as pollution, land-cover changes and invasive species, among other factors, many of which are now amplified due to climate change and extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods and droughts.
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Listen – Canada’s “exceptional” drought from coast to coast to coast
The Current
with Matt Galloway
CBC Listen
August 25, 2025
Across Canada, 71 per cent of the country is abnormally dry or experiencing moderate to severe drought, according to the Canadian Drought Monitor. That includes places like Sunnyside, Newfoundland and Labrador, where the taps ran dry earlier this month. And in Nova Scotia, Farmer Amy Hill in Nova Scotia shares how the dry conditions are straining her farm. John Pomeroy, Director of the Global Water Futures program at the University of Saskatchewan, explains what’s driving these conditions and what Canada must do to prepare for a hotter, drier future.
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In a bone-dry summer, normally parched southern Alberta has been soaked
Paula Duhatschek
CBC News
August 21, 2025
Region the ‘anomaly’ in otherwise dry summer, says Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
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Soot from wildfires on Rocky Mountains glaciers affects Sask. water security
CKOM News
August 18, 2025
It has been a record season for wildfires in Saskatchewan, and while the smoke has a direct impact on people’s health, it is also affecting long term water security in the province.
Dr. John Pomeroy, director of the Centre for Hydrology at University of Saskatchewan (U of S) was a guest on The Evan Bray Show on Monday and described the impact on glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, which feed the South Saskatchewan River from which the province draws most of its water.
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Listen Here
(11:00 segment)
Frequent disasters expose climate risks to infrastructure in South Asia
Niranjan Shrestha and Sibi Arasu
The Associated Press
August 5, 2025
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Floods that damaged hydropower dams in Nepal and destroyed the main bridge connecting the country to China show the vulnerability of infrastructure and need for smart rebuilding in a region bearing the brunt of a warming planet, experts say.
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UPDATE: This story has also been reported on ABC News. Read here
Submerged cars, backed-up traffic, overflowing parks: Calgary drenched in rain
Kevin Green
CTV News Calgary
July 28, 2025
A soaking rainstorm that drenched Calgary from Sunday night into Monday caused flooding across the city, with emergency crews responding to submerged cars, backed-up traffic and overflowing parks.
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Our Future Is on Thin Ice
John Pomeroy
Nature Alberta
June 18, 2025
In the 30 years since global leaders first gathered to discuss how to limit climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Earth has lost close to 8 trillion tonnes of ice1 and the atmospheric concentration of the potent greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has risen from 350 to 430 parts per million2 — a level last experienced about 2.5 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch in which humans later evolved.
As a result of greenhouse gas concentration increases, temperatures are rising quickly and our weather is becoming more extreme. We now stand on the cusp of major losses to Earth’s major polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. These changes are happening much sooner than many scientists’ previous worst-case scenarios.3 They spell the end for both low-lying nations and coastal regions, as maps of coastlines are redrawn by rising seas,4 as well as for wildlife such as polar bears, seals, and Antarctic penguins that have evolved to thrive in these frozen zones.
But they are also set to strike all of us, much closer to home. And it’s hard to imagine anywhere that will feel the force of these changes as acutely as Alberta…
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UPDATE: Canmore water, climate scientist wins international research award
Cathy Ellis
Rocky Mountain Outlook
May 7, 2025
Canmore’s John Pomeroy has been honoured with a prestigious international award for his research over four decades in advancing and understanding climate science, hydrological processes and hydrological predictions.
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UPDATE: Prof. Pomeroy was also recognized by Hon. Tracy Muggli in the Senate on June 12. You can watch and read that address here.