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Feature - Going to extremes

Climate experts say we should prepare for more extreme weather events

The water levels are back to normal in the Sea to Sky corridor, but evidence of a record October rainstorm is everywhere.

Many residents in Squamish and Pemberton are still cleaning out their basements, some of which were completely flooded. Carpets and drywall are being ripped up, spoiled belongings are being carried off to the dump.

BC Rail worked around the clock to restore basic freight service between North Vancouver and Lillooet, replacing wrecked bridges and rail beds along sections of the Cheakamus River and Rutherford Creek.

Two lanes of highway between Whistler and Squamish are open again, although a telltale scar of black asphalt shows where one lane of the highway was swept away.

The road link between Whistler and Pemberton was reopened with a temporary one lane bridge over Rutherford Creek, which will be in place until a more permanent two-lane bridge can be built next year.

In the meantime the temporary bridge serves as a sobering reminder of the real human costs of the disaster – four young men dead, including the father of a four month-old child.

Throughout the corridor, sections of roads and trails have been washed out. Decades of erosion seemed to take place overnight as rivers and creeks jumped their banks.

In just four days, the Squamish area received approximately 369 millimetres of rain. By way of comparison, the average rainfall for Squamish for the entire month of October is about 279 mm.

Because of a technical malfunction there aren’t any precipitation statistics for Whistler, but it was thought to be on par with Squamish. According to a B.C. Hydro representative, enough water fell locally in those four days to fill the Daisy Lake reservoir three times over.

Some meteorologists have billed the record breaking rains, which were delivered to the coast by a relatively common weather phenomenon known as a "Pineapple Express", as a 100-year-storm.

While that explanation seems to satisfy some people, there are those who believe that these kinds of extreme weather events are going to become more and more common as the earth’s climate changes.

Looking back at the past year, B.C.’s weather has bounced from one extreme to another. Consider:

An unusually mild fall led to a late start to the ski season for Whistler, which was off-set by a near-record snowfall on Christmas Day. The mountains surrounding Vancouver had terrible seasons and were forced to close on occasion as the unusually warm winter temperatures even made snowmaking impossible.

In February, a sudden windstorm gusted in excess of 130 km/h in town, trapping thousands of people on chairlifts and in lodges on Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. Hundreds of trees were knocked over on the mountain and in the valley.

While winds are known to gust at that intensity in the high alpine, a weather expert for the mountains was surprised by how sudden and unpredictable the storm was. It was the strongest wind he had seen at the Roundhouse elevation in his 25 years with the mountain.

Throughout the winter, an unstable and unpredictable snowpack in the Interior of the province may have been a factor in a record 24 avalanche deaths.

This summer’s record drought conditions gave fuel to the worst wildfires the province has seen in generations, destroying more than 300 homes and several businesses.

That event has surpassed the Quebec ice storm of 1998 as the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history, resulting in more than half a billion dollars in damages, fire fighting costs, and disaster relief expenses. Indirect costs to the forest industry and the tourism industry are still being assessed.

The wildfire situation in the province was exacerbated by a widespread mountain pine beetle infestation that has killed or weakened large swaths of trees in the Interior. The infestation has also been exacerbated by unusual weather, including a prolonged drought over several years that has weakened the ability of trees to survive the infestation, and warmer than average winters than have been unable to kill the beetles off.

Not all extreme weather events have been negative. Several areas around B.C., including Squamish and Pemberton, reported record warm temperatures for two days in early October.

But while there’s nothing unusual or dangerous about an Indian Summer in October, any new seasonal highs or lows are significant because they can indicate change, and push the threshold of what is deemed possible.

Taken together, the recent extreme weather events to hit B.C. make 2003 a most unusual and expensive year, to say the least.

And it’s not over. A week ago a powerful wind storm knocked out power and cable service in some areas of the Lower Mainland, toppling trees in developed areas.

Jim Roemer, a meteorologist who makes predictions for the ski industry on his Web site, www.bestweather.com, is predicting an early start to the ski season on the coast this winter with above average snowfall.

A blizzard has already closed the Trans-Canada highway at Rogers Pass and along the Alberta border. Temperatures in the Lake Louise area were already more than 20 degrees below zero toward the end of October.

Not that B.C. and Alberta have the Canadian market cornered on extreme weather events. Halifax and Nova Scotia are still reeling from September’s Hurricane Juan, which toppled thousands of trees that have stood for hundreds of years.

The Maritimes have been hit with so much cold and rain this year that reliable crops of blueberries and apples crapped out.

Quebec has had to deal with the effects of flooding in mountainous areas, and a heat wave in urban centres.

The prairies weathered another long drought this summer, leaving wheat crops and farmers at their breaking point.

In the far north, warm winters and summers are causing glaciers and ice floes to break up, endangering polar bear populations that need ice to hunt seals.

In the U.S., California is battling the worst wildfires in recent history. More than 3,000 homes have been lost and 20 residents and fire fighters have died.

Fall hurricanes caused billions of dollars in damages along the east coast, almost washing entire island communities away.

The central part of the country was hit with more than 150 tornadoes over the summer, a record for a region already renowned for its twisters.

Looking around the world, the big picture gets even worse. A drought and subsequent wildfires in the south of France and Italy left more than 10,000 dead and many more homeless.

Last winter Moscow enjoyed the mildest weather in that city’s long history.

Recent years have seen catastrophic flooding in Prague and Venice.

A drought threatens an extended famine for parts of Africa that have been stable for decades.

Flooding has led to the evacuation of tens of thousands in China.

And that’s just the tip of a rapidly melting iceberg.

When you put all of the year’s extreme weather events together, it paints a worrying picture.

Are these events related, or is it just a coincidence? And could it be a coincidence that they are occurring now, when scientists estimate that the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are at their highest in more than 10,000 years?

As the number and severity of extreme weather events continue to build, so does the intensity of the climate change debate.

Preparing for climate change

If climate experts are correct and the world is getting warmer, then B.C. should brace itself for more years like 2003.

"It’s hard to say that individual storm events or drought events are happening because of global warming, but there are a couple of things that we can say here," explains Stewart Cohen, a scientist with the Adaptation and Impacts Research Group at Environment Canada, and a Senior Associate with the Sustainable Research Institute at the University of British Columbia.

"One thing we can say is that the current climate is no longer 100 per cent natural, and hasn’t been for a number of years," said Cohen.

"We can say that what we’re seeing now is the rationalization of natural forces mixed in with greenhouse gases, creating a mixed climate regime.

"We can say that as the levels of greenhouse gases continue to increase, the climate is going to continue to change. In this part of the world that means overall that temperatures are warmer, the winters are wetter, and the summers are probably getting drier."

Cohen was the co-ordinating lead author of the North American chapter in the 2001 UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report titled Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

In the IPCC’s scientific opinion, the debate on whether global warming and climate change are occurring is over – there’s too much evidence to prove that the earth is getting hotter.

What is left to be debated is just how much human activities are contributing to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions and the exploitation of forests and other ecosystems, and how we can reduce or eliminate our potential impact on the earth’s climate.

The IPCC is also concerned with the ongoing challenge of mitigating the impacts of global warming by preparing for droughts, floods, storms and other extreme weather events.

According to Cohen, the recent extreme weather events to take place in B.C. are consistent with the projections made in the 2001 IPCC report. Among other things, the report predicted that there will be an increase in climate variability and in the occurrence of some extreme events.

According to the IPCC, "Models project that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will result in changes in daily, seasonal, inter-annual and decadal variability."

That means greater fluctuations in winter and summer temperatures, wetter climates in some regions, drier climates in others, and the possibility of more El Nino-like conditions. The extreme events include more hot days, heat waves, heavy precipitation events, and fewer cold days.

"Many of these projected changes would lead to increased risks of floods and droughts in many regions and predominantly adverse impacts on ecological systems, socio-economic sectors, and human health," wrote the IPCC.

Cohen is cautious about linking recent events to climate change, but said the connection can’t be ruled out either. Generally climate scientists look at trends as they emerge over a period of years and decades, comparing the data with seasonal averages.

"What we could find is that today’s peak (weather) day falls in tomorrow’s upper third day, an increase in the type of event we call ‘extreme’. Those one-of-a-kind events, the storms, the hot days in February, won’t be so one-of-a-kind anymore," said Cohen.

There is an ongoing debate among climatologists as to how much climate change is natural and how much is man-made. Scientists do agree that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million to 370 ppm over the past 150 years, with human emissions doubling in the last 20 years.

Many believe that at least part of that trend, as well as the general global warming trends that have seen a break-up of glaciers on both poles in recent years, is natural. Forests, wildfires and other natural phenomena do contribute significantly to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the environment.

Rather than debate the causes and solutions, Cohen believes the next logical step for governments to take is to assess and mitigate the risks for communities as a result of extreme weather events.

"The challenge is how do you incorporate these extremes into design… prepare by looking into the future," said Cohen. "If droughts continue in the Okanagan, what does that mean for water supplies and irrigation? What does it mean for reservoir management and in making sure there is enough water left over for the fish?

"For Squamish and Whistler and Pemberton, what does it mean for the drainage and diking. Planners should be asking, ‘do we need to change the location of roads, or build different kinds of bridges?’"

There is an extra cost to anticipating extreme weather events, says Cohen, and every community needs to do a cost-benefit analysis that takes the weather into consideration.

"You can’t predict if and when the next extreme storm or drought is coming, but you can plan for when it does," said Cohen.

"If you believe that the increase in greenhouse gases has impacted our climate and made the weather more extreme, then you need to expect that more events are on the way."

Reducing risk by reducing greenhouse gas emissions

The David Suzuki Foundation takes a slightly different view on mitigating the impacts of global warming and climate change, putting the onus on individuals and businesses to change their habits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"What it says to us, if these are the kinds of weather events that we can expect from higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, then we really need to look at ourselves, and look at ways to resource our dependence on things like fossil fuels," said Morah Carter, the director of the climate change program at the David Suzuki Foundation.

"Absolutely (this summer’s events) should be a wake-up call to people and governments. As far as we’re concerned the debate (on climate change) is over – Canada has signed the Kyoto Protocol, and we should be implementing these cuts as part of our international obligations."

Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol in December of 2002, agreeing to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 240 million tonnes a year by 2010. We currently produce 700 million tonnes a year, or about two per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions with only one half of one per cent of the world’s population. That works out to roughly 23 tonnes per person annually.

According to Carter, governments in B.C. and Alberta are opposed to ratifying Kyoto because they feel that the extra costs would scare away industry and investment and increase burdens for taxpayers. Both provinces also have thriving fossil fuel industries, with B.C. recently taking steps toward off-shore drilling.

However, Carter believes that B.C. and Alberta governments are ignoring the long-term costs of global warming, while exaggerating Kyoto’s impact on the economy.

"The provinces need to get on side with this because extreme weather events are costing us money, too," said Carter. "It’s about taking some responsibility for our actions now, because we know it could cost us a lot more in the long run. We can’t afford any more summers like the one we just had."

The concept of global warming as a result of greenhouse gases is now generally accepted by most governments and scientific institutions, and by economic groups like the insurance industry, Carter says.

Actions are being taken on a national and global scale, but individuals can also be encouraged to make a difference.

Last year the David Suzuki Foundation launched the Nature Challenge, with 10 suggestions of how people can work to conserve nature in their daily routines. They also released a toolkit to help communities battle urban sprawl, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

"People are coming to us looking for information like never before," said Carter. "Definitely the drought of this summer brought the idea of global warming home to people like never before, and they want to know more about it. They also want to know what they can do, and are more open to ideas and to changes."

Doing your best while preparing for the worst

Taking advantage of a cold snap to start the month of November, Whistler-Blackcomb has already shifted snowmaking operations into high gear. The mountains should receive some natural snow before the scheduled opening day on Nov. 27, but these days you have to hedge your bets.

"We believe that global warming is the most concerning global issue of our time, as an industry and as a society, and we’re taking it very seriously. It’s very core to our strategic planning," said Arthur DeJong, Whistler-Blackcomb Mountain Planning and Environmental Resource Manager.

As a skier destination, Whistler is prized for the size and scope of the terrain, and for the most consistent snow in North America. Only twice in the last 20 years have Whistler-Blackcomb received less than 300 inches of snow, and 10 of those years saw more than 400 inches.

Even last season, in which snow conditions were poor until Christmas and January and February snowfalls were below average, the mountains received 483 inches of snow.

If global warming trends continue, ski seasons could start later and temperature and precipitation could be less predictable. Mountains also have to prepare for more extreme weather events, says DeJong.

"In our operations, there are two things we do. One is to try and mitigate our impact with respect to global warming. The other is to adapt to it," said "DeJong."

This year, Whistler-Blackcomb added more than four million gallons – almost 12 million litres – of water storage to Blackcomb Mountain. Last season the mountains acquired new snow guns, increasing snowmaking capacity by 20 per cent.

"You can see by taking a look up Whistler and Blackcomb that we’re making more snow than we ever have in the past," said DeJong. "We used to make snow from the treeline to mid-mountain, around the 1,500 metre elevation. That’s the base of the Catskinner or Jersey Cream or Harmony chairs. Now we’re making it from the treeline down to the download lifts, to the top of the Excalibur Gondola, the top of the Wizard."

In addition to snowmaking, the mountains are smoothing out some runs and planting native grasses and vegetation that hold the snow longer. They are also making some cross-ditches smaller, and laying cedar log decks over ditches to make them easier to cover.

Recognizing the potential for more extreme weather events, Whistler-Blackcomb no longer looks just at historical data when planning, but rather at worst case scenarios. As a result, the mountains got through the record October rainfall with a minimum of damage.

"There were some small road failures, but overall the mountains managed this enormous storm relatively well," said DeJong.

"I have no doubt this is directly the result of our work over the last four years with Operation Greenup. We’ve put in oversized culverts, replaced some culverts with bridges, replanted a lot of vegetation on the mountain that maintained the integrity of our slopes through everything.

"We still have work to do," he added, "but (Operation Greenup) really proved itself."

To reduce the mountains’ contribution to global warming, Whistler-Blackcomb is looking into everything from more fuel efficient engines to run-of-river hydro generation.

"We can’t cut out our emissions altogether, not yet, but what we can do is to embrace the best of current technologies," said DeJong.

One example is the mountain’s acquisition of new engines for their grooming fleet that have reduced fuel use by 25 per cent. That’s significant considering that grooming accounts for about two-thirds of all fuel consumption.

The mountains have also replaced a third of their snowmobile fleet with more efficient machines that can cut fuel consumption and emissions by as much as 50 per cent.

"We have a fairly quick turnover with our snowmobile fleet, so we have the opportunity to replace them all with more efficient engines if the ones we got work out for us," said DeJong.

One of the most significant things Whistler-Blackcomb is pursuing, with partner company Ledcor, is a small hydro project for the Fitzsimmons Creek. The project is on hold until plans for the Olympic sliding centre are completed, and a public hearing can be held.

"Our position hasn’t changed, that is if the community doesn’t want this we won’t carry through with it," said DeJong.

Some environmentalists are concerned that run-of-river hydro projects will have a negative impact on fish and habitat downstream, and believe more studies should be done on their long-term impact.

The fish values are non-existent in the upper Fitzsimmons Creek to begin with, says DeJong, and the water that is diverted from the creek is returned to the creek prior to a snowmaking reservoir and a natural waterfall – in other words the creek is already in use.

"More and more people are recognizing good micro hydro verses bad micro hydro, and making that distinction," said DeJong. "On this creek we believe it is the right thing to do, and there’s no other green energy solution on the grid that’s in our hands today."

The run of river project would provide as much power annually as Whistler-Blackcomb uses each year.

"That’s a great stride in sustainability," said DeJong.



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