Publications Library

This Science Brief covers a recent paper in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems that examines to what extent shared components and computer code between models affects their simulated climate sensitivities, feedbacks and resulting projections of surface air temperature. It finds that models with shared code tend to have greater similarity in their climate sensitivities, strengths of feedbacks, and therefore in their projected surface temperatures. The authors also demonstrated that weighting ensembles of models according to their family resemblance resulted in a lower equilibrium climate sensitivity than when using a simple ensemble mean, and also reduced differences in climate sensitivity between the two most recent generations of climate models.

The Earth’s climate system is warming, and signs of climate change are becoming evident across the planet. The capital region, located on Southern Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands of British Columbia (BC), is no exception. The Capital Regional District (CRD) has partnered with the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC) to produce high-resolution regional projections for temperature, precipitation, and related indices of extremes. These projections use the most up-to-date global modeling data (i.e., the Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP6) to illustrate how the region’s climate may change by the middle of this century. Information provided by this report and the accompanying data is intended to support decision makers and community partners in the region with an improved understanding of projected local climate change and related impacts.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is responsible for the management and protection of marine
resources on the Pacific coast of Canada. Oceanographically there is strong seasonality in
coastal upwelling and downwelling, considerable freshwater influence, and variability from
coupling with events and conditions in the tropical and North Pacific Ocean. The region supports
ecologically and economically important resident and migratory populations of invertebrates,
groundfish, pelagic fishes, marine mammals and seabirds.
Since 1999 an annual State of the Pacific Ocean meeting has been convened by DFO to bring
together the marine science community in the Pacific Region and present the results of the most
recent year’s monitoring in the context of previous observations and expected future conditions.
The workshop to review ecosystem conditions in 2022 was a hybrid meeting, convened both inperson in Victoria, B.C. and virtually, March 9-10, 2023. This technical report includes
submissions based on presentations given at the meeting and poster summaries.
Climate change is a dominant pressure acting on North Pacific marine ecosystems, causing, for
example, increasing temperatures, deoxygenation, and acidification, and changes to circulation
and vertical mixing. These pressures impact ecosystem nutrient concentrations and primary and
secondary productivity, which then affect higher trophic levels through the food chain.

This Science Brief covers a paper published in Nature Climate Change that uses reanalysis data to examine extreme fire weather and the conditions that drive it over the 1979-2020 period. The paper shows that temperature and relative humidity are driving observed global trends of increased fire weather. In this Science Brief we discuss what these results tell us about changes to fire weather in our province and across Canada.

As a consequence of global warming, the world's glaciers have been shrinking. Changes to glaciers in BC could have wide-ranging impacts to BC's ecosystems and human communities, across multiple sectors. Remote sensing data has been invaluable in measuring and characterizing changes to the world's glaciers. Recent research published in Remote Sensing of the Environment using such data shows that western Canadian glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate and examines how this is related to changes in seasonal temperature and precipitation. Here we discuss what these results tell us about changes to western Canada's glaciers.

As the climate warms, the Earth's cryosphere, comprised of snow, ice and frozen soil, including permafrost, has been shrinking. Changes in snow cover, depth and the timing of snow melt can have impacts on ecosystems and human communities. Data on snow cover and depth is used to identify historical trends and provides a baseline with which to compare projected future changes.

Recent research published in Atmosphere-Ocean examines trends in snow cover as measured at observing stations by ruler and sonic sensors, looking at how snow cover has changed over the 1955-2017 period and comparing the two methods of measurement. In this Science Brief we discuss what these results tell us about snow cover in Canada's changing climate.

The state of the future climate depends on human actions, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases and other industrial pollutants. This raises the questions: "What path are recent historical emissions following?" "What path would we be on, if we continue with business-as-usual, in the absence of further mitigation action?" And, "Are these paths reliable guides to future emissions?" One scenario that is commonly used in the scientific literature, RCP 8.5, is often referred to as "business-as-usual." Recently, some scientists have taken issue with this description, saying it is unrealistic and may hinder the goal of emissions reductions policy. Others argue that, in fact, RCP 8.5 is the scenario that most closely tracks cumulative emissions to date, that it is thus of the most use for planning out to the middle of the century. In this Science Brief, we unpack each of these arguments and evaluate what these differing perspectives can tell us about the ultimate objective of emissions scenarios as tools for exploring future climate change.

This Science Brief covers a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Xu et al. (2020), who use global climate model (GCM) output, weather station data, estimates of historical global population density, and data on global gross domestic product (GDP), crop and livestock production, to determine if there has been a human climate niche. They determine that such a niche has existed. For the past 6000 years, human populations have lived largely in a fairly narrow range of climates and populations clustered around two temperature ranges, with most people living in a range of about 11°C to about 15°C for mean annual temperature and a smaller, but significant portion living in a range around 20°C to about 25°C.
They then examine how this niche may change in the future. They find that, under a high emissions scenario, this niche is projected to shift spatially more in the upcoming 50 years than it has in the past 6000, leaving a third of the projected future human population in regions where the mean annual temperature is greater than 29°C.

This report places the conditions in British Columbia (BC) over 2019 into climatological context. It finds that: a moderate El Niño likely contributed to a slightly warmer than normal 2019 in BC; anomalous warmth peaked in spring, forcing rapid melt of a near-normal winter snowpack; precipitation in summer and fall was above-to-much-above normal across the province; trends in temperature are positive for the period 1950 – 2019 with minimum temperatures (Tmin) increasing faster than maximum temperatures (Tmax), and that precipitation shows no significant trend over the same period.