A new research from Environment Canada has shown that catastrophic floods that impacted much of Southern British Columbia last fall were twice as likely because of climate change.
The study, which is now undergoing peer review, concludes that the likelihood of similar events in the future will only increase as global warming continues to upend normal weather patterns.
An atmospheric physicist and manager of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis Nathan Gillett said, “We do find substantial ongoing increases in the probability of these kinds of events”.
Recall that in November 2021, B.C. saw three events come together to create unprecedented flooding.
What was described as a so-called “atmospheric river” brought two days of drenching rain and It fell on already-sodden soil that couldn’t absorb much more and was augmented by high temperatures that swelled bursting stream beds with snowmelt.
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According to reports, the result was almost 15,000 people forced from their homes, major roads and bridges washed away and farms flooded in up to two metres of water. Landslides killed at least five people.
Gillett and his colleagues wanted to estimate the contribution of climate change to the disaster while it was still fresh in public memory. They turned to the science of climate attribution, which uses climate models to estimate the influence of one or more factors on weather events.
“We compared simulations with human influence and compared them with simulations without human influence,” he said.
He explained that the team worked with a group at Oxford University doing similar research, adding that to ensure the results weren’t influenced by quirks in any one model, the team used more than two dozen different ones.
“The results were consistent across all of them,” he said. “All of the models show an increase in this kind of event in response to human-induced climate change.”
The team concluded that climate change had increased the odds of an atmospheric river like the one that swamped B.C. by at least 60 per cent.
Story was adapted from Canadian Underwriter.
