Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
2c more would probably still cause major grief, 4c would be a major disaster.
I posted this in another thread but it went unnoticed.
I might try and find some time and do the data for every month, especially the winter months
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Yes, but 2 degrees in the gobal climate and 2 degrees in the local climate are two totally different things.
Think of it this way, the prairies are based in a continental climate. Continental climates, due to their central location, have a large variability in weather. So we can expect a change of 2 degrees Celsius globally, to be multiplied drastically for us. Basically any change that happens to the world is always multiplied for a continental, variable, climate.
Some Scientists in the states think that Canada will actually benefit from climate change due to the increased growing season. This is false. A recent study by the IACC shows that while we will see an increase in growing season due to rising temperatures, it will be off set by INCREASED precipitation. What the hell, how is that even possible? We will see an increase of rainfall in the winter months, not snow. Meaning that runoff will be very limited in the spring. Also, in the summers, we will see our rain come in more intense rainfall bursts which will result in less overall days with rain.
So in theory, an increase in rainfall will actually hurt the prairies. 1999-2005 drought cost us $5.6 billion of the GDP. What happens when another multi year drought hits and we have increased growing seasons coupled with less available precipitation? You can bet, just like the variability of the climate sees any changes get multiplied in the prairies, so will that number.
Here is a link to PARC's website (IACC), they compared the South Saskatchewan River Basin to parts of Chile to see what we can expect with a changing climate in the future.
http://www.parc.ca/mcri/