Canada on track to be slightly warmer than normal in 2019
Credit to Author: Tiffany Crawford| Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2019 23:00:13 +0000
This year will likely end the warmest decade on record globally, while Canada is on track to be slightly warmer than normal in 2019.
Robert Whitewood, a climate science advisor for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said the federal weather agency recently contributed Canada’s temperature data to the World Meteorological Organization, for its provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate released on Tuesday.
The dire report, released ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, found that exceptional global heat driven by greenhouse gas emissions mean this decade will most likely go down as the warmest on record.
It also stated that 2019 will be the second or third warmest year, with the global average temperature during January through October roughly 1.1 C above the pre-industrial era.
Whitewood said Canada was 0.8 C above average from January to August, and that the country is on track to be the 21st warmest since 1948, the year that the agency began tracking temperatures for the whole country and not just the southern half.
“It is above normal, not record-setting, but part of a warming trend across the country… the temperature is increasing over the years,” he said in an interview Friday.
“The general trend is toward a warmer world and a warmer Canada.”
Whitewood noted that overall Canada has warmed 1.7 C since 1948, about twice the global average. The Canadian Arctic has been hit even harder, with a 2.3 C increase. These findings were published earlier this year in Canada’s Changing Climate Report .
Fourteen of the last 20 years in Canada were the warmest on record, Whitewood added.
The WMO report stated that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record level of 407.8 parts per million globally in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019.
Sea level rise has accelerated since the start of satellite measurements in 1993 because of the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, according to the report. Ocean heat is at record levels and there have been widespread marine heatwaves.
Also, sea water is 26 per cent more acidic than at the start of the industrial era, the report says.
WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said, in a statement this week, that “if we do not take urgent climate action now, then we are heading for a temperature increase of more than 3 C by the end of the century, with ever more harmful impacts on human wellbeing.”
Taalas also said the world is “nowhere near” on track to meet the Paris Agreement target.
Extreme heat conditions are taking an increasing toll on human health and health systems, the report found. In 2018, a record 220 million more heatwave exposures by vulnerable persons over the age of 65 occurred, compared with the average for the baseline of 1986 to 2005.
A final WMO State of the Climate report with complete 2019 data will be published in March.
The WMO’s climate report is provided to delegates at the United Nations climate change negotiations, known as CoP25, which is currently taking place in Madrid until Dec. 13.
On Friday, an estimated half a million climate activists gathered in Madrid during the negotiations, according to a BBC report. Among the speakers at the rally were Spanish actor Javier Bardem and teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, who attended a rally in Vancouver last month as part of her visit to North America.
The demonstrators in Madrid are calling for more ambitious climate change policy.
ticrawford@postmedia.com