How will climate change affect Canada?
Experts say governments must prepare for the new realities.
There is a lot of talk about climate change right now. Hurricanes are particularly difficult to predict, experts say. The ScienceBrief platform has a new report suggesting that regions now affected by hurricanes will be even more susceptible to this natural phenomenon in the future.
A review of 90 studies found that if the planet warms by 2 degrees by 2100, maximum wind speeds in hurricanes could increase by 5%. This means that municipal and federal governments, including those in Canada, must be prepared for new problems they have not faced before.
"It's important that governments plan how to adapt to climate change," said Canadian researcher Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the Royal Society of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, who edited the report. — Some events will occur where there may never have been hurricane-force winds. And so there is a need to think through how to deal with the consequences".
The report was published ahead of the United Nations' COP-26 climate conference, to be held November 1-2 in Glasgow, Scotland.
In the United States and Canada, hurricanes are classified according to the Saffir-Simpson scale, which includes 5 categories. Hurricanes of categories 3 to 5, with wind speeds of 180-250 km/h, are considered strong.
But it's not all so clear-cut. The impact of climate change on hurricanes is difficult to estimate because there are so many factors to consider. The report says that hurricane intensity is "likely" to increase as a result of climate change. However, this is difficult to say for sure because of several factors, including a lack of historical data. Since 1979, the number of Category 3 and above hurricanes has increased by about 5%, but it is unclear how this is related to climate change.
The possible influence of climate on hurricanes can be explained by the fact that an increase in sea surface temperature contributes to the formation of hurricane winds. More moisture is also capable of triggering hurricanes and heavy rainfall. Studies have also shown that hurricanes move to the North and South Poles by about 56 km per year and that they move inland.
"Certainly, Canada should consider whether hurricanes are a threat ... whether they could affect large populated areas if they become more intense," Le Quere said.
In general, climatologists agree that more research on this topic is needed and only time will tell how climate change and hurricanes will affect people's lives.
