Publications Library

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 PCIC Primer, on Understanding Future Climate Scenarios, provides context for, and an explanation of, two sets of emissions scenarios, the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), used for the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), used in CMIP6.

Relationships among surface wind speed, North Pacific climate variability, Pacific climate variability, and tree/weather related power outages are investigated in forest rich British Columbia using almost 12 years of BC Hydro (BCH) wind and power outage data, two decades of BC weather station observations and two climate variability indices. Strong surface wind is found to be the dominate cause of power outages that are reported as being tree or weather related. The observed regional fraction of power outage days and the number of influenced customers per outage day increases quickly when the daily maximum wind speed (DMWS) exceeds 50 km/hr. These extreme winds are mostly observed during winter, with substantial interannual variability in BC coastal regions in the frequency of strong days when DMWS exceeds 50 km/hr. A simple empirical outage model is developed using monthly DMWS frequency in southern coastal BC as a predictor. Cross-validation, which is used to estimate the model's out-of-sample performance, suggests a useful level of skill in hindcasting subseasonal to interannual variations in the frequency of observed regional tree/weather outage occurrence during the 2005 to 2017 period when power outage data are available. The widespread power outage event of December 2006 can also be captured when winter windstorm information is added as an additional model input.

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.

This report is intended to support a local understanding of how climate across the Okanagan is projected to change, and inform regional planning on how to prepare for future climate events. This report offers climate projections for both the 2050s and the 2080s. The 2050s projections are useful for medium-term planning purposes, while the 2080s provide guidance for long-term planning and decision-making.

Climate change is challenging industry and communities across the Northeast region of the province. Wildfires, hail storms, and floods have already challenged local infrastructure and posed health risks to communities. Projected climate change for the region includes increases in frequency and intensity of extremes. Ensuring the region is as prepared as possible for future climate events is critical to maintaining a thriving community, robust natural environment, and vibrant economy. As prepared as possible means the region understands how the climate is changing, and is working together to increase resiliency, and to improve natural and physical infrastructure. Early efforts will reduce the reliance on emergency management and support the ability to thrive over time. Local governments in the region are taking a proactive approach to understanding how climate change will pose risks to Northeast communities and are planning together to build resiliency across the region.

This document is intended to offer science-based information on how the Northeast’s climate is changing and expected to change over the 21st century. Designing to current and future climate parameters is anticipated to be markedly more cost effective than reacting to climate shocks and stresses over time. In the report, climate projections for the 2020s are offered to represent current climate conditions; projections for the 2050s illustrate the trajectory of change regardless of global emissions reductions; and projections for the 2080s illustrate our likely “business as usual” future climate scenario by late century. The 2020s projections are useful as they more accurately depict the current state of climate than historical observed baseline data. The 2050s projections are useful for medium-term planning and infrastructure purposes, while the 2080s provide guidance for long-term infrastructure decisions.

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.