Publications Library

A forward-thinking group at Nanaimo Hospital developed a comprehensive climate risk assessment matrix which is becoming an integral part of their organizational decision-making. Future hospital retrofits will potentially include increased cooling capacity, enhanced air filtration, and other measures to reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the facility and its patients from the potential effects of climate change.

The 2015 Paris Climate Accord aims to limit global warming to at most 2°C and ideally 1.5°C relative to the preindustrial climate, to limit the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. In this Science Brief, we discuss greenhouse gas emissions budgets and pathways consistent with these warming limits.

Three recent papers in Nature Climate Change examine different aspects of these budgets and pathways:

Tokarska and Gillett (2018) use global climate model projections to calculate a new carbon budget for future emissions, relative to the 2006-2015 period, that is consistent with keeping warming to 1.5°C. They find a median remaining carbon budget of 208 billion tonnes from January 2016.

Tanaka and O'Neill (2018) use an integrated assessment model to test whether the Paris temperature limits of 2°C and 1.5°C require zero greenhouse gas emissions, whether a zero net greenhouse emissions limit implies that the temperature limits will be met and what the effect of imposing both emissions and temperature limits are. Their results suggest that meeting the  temperature limits doesn't require reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, that reducing emissions to zero doesn't necessarily result in keeping temperatures under the Paris temperature limits by the end of the century, and that the effect of imposing both temperature and emissions limits is that temperatures decline after meeting the initial temperature limit.

Van Vuuren et al. also use an integrated assessment model, to develop alternative emissions scenarios that examine how the need for negative emissions may be reduced through implementing other strategies, such as making large-scale lifestyle changes, shifting to renewable energy and switching to more efficient technologies for the production of energy and materials. They find that these strategies can reduce to a small degree, but not eliminate, the need for negative emissions. They also find that these measures have co-benefits such as helping to meet other United Nations sustainability goals.

The Fraser Valley Climate Adaptive Drainage Management Forum project was initiated to generate and share the best available precipitation projections for the Fraser Valley; research collaborative climate adaptive drainage management strategies adopted in comparable settings; and host a Forum between producers, local government and agency staff, researchers and agricultural association representatives to deliberate preferred drainage management strategies to address local runoff and drainage challenges.

Three recent journal articles examine the rate of sea level rise and the ability of models to accurately simulate sea level rise at a global and regional scale.

Publishing in Geophysical Research Letters, Yi et al. (2017) examine the rate at which sea level rise is accelerating and find that the rate of acceleration over the 2005-2015 period is three times faster than it was over the 1993-2014 period and an order of magnitude larger than the acceleration over the 1920-2011 period. They also identify three primary contributors to this acceleration: the thermal expansion of sea water, reduced storage of water on land and the melting of ice on land.

In a pair of articles published in the Journal of Climate, Slangen et al. (2017) and Meyssignac et al. (2017) analyze the of climate models to simulate both global and regional sea level rise. They find that simulations can only explain about half (50% ± 30%) of the observed sea level rise. After bias corrections are included for the Greenland ice sheet and the possibility that ice sheets and the deep ocean were not in equilibrium with the 20th Century climate, the models explain about three-quarters (75% ± 38%) of the observed 20th Century sea level rise and all (105% ± 35%) of the observed sea level rise over the period from 1993-1997 to 2011-2015 period. Regionally, climate models underestimate the amount of sea level rise that occured, but do show reasonable agreement for interannual and multidecadal variability. When the same bias corrections are applied, the models come into closer agreement with observations. In addition, they find that the spatial variability in regional sea level rise is largely due to the thermal expansion of sea water and ongoing isostatic adjustment resulting from the end of the last glacial period.

Temperatures in the Cowichan Valley are warming. Global climate models project an increase in annual average temperature of almost 3°C in our region by the 2050s. While that may seem like a small change, it is comparable to the difference between the warmest and coldest years of the past. The purpose of this report is to quantify, with the most robust projections possible, the related climate impacts (including changes to climate extremes) associated with warming. This climate information will then inform regional risk assessment, decision making, and planning in the Cowichan Valley region, with a goal of improving resilience to
climate change. For this reason, this report focusses on the business-as-usual emissions scenario and the 2050s timeframe. By the end of the 21st century, projected warming and associated impacts are even larger. In addition, the amount of warming by that time depends more highly on the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted in the meantime.

Temperatures in the Capital Regional District (CRD) are warming. Global climate models project an average annual warming of about 3°C in our region by the 2050s. While that may seem like a small change, it is comparable to the difference between the warmest and coldest years of the past. The purpose of this report is to quantify, with the most robust projections possible, the related climate impacts (including changes to climate extremes) associated with warming. This climate information will then inform regional vulnerability and risk assessments, decision-making, and planning in the capital region, with a goal of improving resilience to climate change.

This Science Brief covers recent research by Mao et al. (2016) published in Nature Climate Change. The authors find that the observed greening of the land surface between 30-75° north over the 1982-2011 period is largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Two articles recently published in the peer reviewed literature examine two types of extreme weather events that affect coastal British Columbia, storm surge events and atmospheric river events.

The first paper, by Soontiens et al. (2016) in Atmosphere-Ocean examines the ability of a numerical ocean model to simulate storm surges in the Strait of Georgia and the relative contribution of several factors to storm surge amplitude in the region. The authors use the model to simulate six storm surge events from the 2006-2012 period at four locations and find that the model does well at reproducing the magnitude of storm surges. They also find that the primary contribution to storm surges in the region are sea surface height anomalies from the Pacific, with local wind patterns causing small spatial differences in the sea surface height.

The second paper, by Hagos et al. (2016) in Geophysical Research Letters uses output from a global climate model to examine changes to atmospheric river events over western North America, assuming large, business-as-usual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The authors’ projections show an increase of about 35% in days on which atmospheric rivers make landfall in the last 20 years of the 21st century when compared to the last 20 years of the 20th century. Their projections also show a resulting increase of about 28% in extreme precipitation days.

The City of Vancouver is warming. Global climate models project annual average temperature to increase by 1.7°C to 4.0°C, and indicate an average increase of 2.9°C between the 1971-2000 baseline and the 2050s. This fact sheet provides specific information intended to facilitate adaptation as the climate changes. All values in the summary are for the 2050s relative to the 1971-2000 baseline. Additional variables, seasons, projections for the 2080s, and maps were also produced and provided to the City of Vancouver.