CH director Professor John Pomeroy and CH fellow Mike Demuth (Geological Survey of Canada) have contributed to an article in the National Post outlining ways in which the effects of climate-change may be felt across Canada. The piece considers likely changes in temperature, precipitation, glacial cover, water resources, distributions of vegetation and wildlife and some related socio-economic issues.

The article is available here. Please note that early versions misquoted Prof. Pomeroy: the related passage should read as follows;

The extra rain, for example, is unlikely to fall in a gentle spring shower. Look for it in great flooding downpours or winter rains that drain before they can nourish crops.

John Pomeroy, a Canada research chair in water resources at the University of Saskatchewan, points out the amount of water that falls as snow has already declined by one-third on the Prairies. The number of multi-day rains has increased by half.

“Farmers need to adapt to that, to being inundated and flooded quite a bit,” he said.

Two new videos describing CH science have been published, and are available for online viewing:

• Prairie Hydrology
• The Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory

More videos relating to our research are available here.

CH Director Professor John Pomeroy was asked by Canmore’s Rocky Mountain Outlook to comment on the warm and dry conditions seen this winter in Alberta’s southern mountains.

He said that while temperatures are running some 8°C above average and snowpack is below-normal, prospects for summer flows depend primarily on the weather to come through the spring. The current strong El Niño is largely to blame this year, but with average winter temperatures having risen 1.5° to 2°C since the early 1960s, these conditions may well become more commonplace in future decades.

The article (published 17th February 2016) is available for online viewing here.

CH director Professor John Pomeroy was asked by The Globe and Mail this week to comment on the likely influences of climate-change on winter outdoor pursuits in two strongly contrasting contexts.

For the first article (published on Sunday 31st January 2016), he was asked how risks associated with mountain snowpacks might alter with changing climatic conditions, following the loss of five snowmobilers’ lives in the BC Rocky Mountains as the result of an avalanche.

He responded that increasing minimum air temperatures should tend generally to result in more consolidated snowpacks, which in turn should be more stable. Warmer, wetter snow is also less likely to be transported by wind, to form cornices on the lees of ridges: sudden failure of such features is a common cause of avalanches. However, there are signs that winter weather patterns may be swinging more frequently between extremes of warm and cold: this will influence patterns and characteristics of precipitation, and alter snowpack metamorphic processes, thereby increasing the challenge of accurately forecasting avalanche risks.

The second (published on Wednesday 3rd February 2016) considered how warmer winter conditions are impacting the viability of outdoor rinks, and thus opportunities for shinny and other varieties of informal hockey. Dr Pomeroy’s prognosis was pessimistic, in view of increasing occurrences of warm temperatures and rainfall, and the corresponding unreliability of ground remaining frozen throughout the winter, in many areas of the country. (Those with an interest in this serious risk to one of the nation’s key icons of winter identity, not to mention its future hockey prospects, might also be interested in the RinkWatch project.)

The articles are available for online viewing here:

• Snowmobilers attempted to save friend who died in avalanche
  Justin Giovannetti, Mike Hager; Sunday 31st January 2016
• Balmy in February: When puddles replace rinks, we all lose
  Dave Bidini; Wednesday 3rd February 2016