ICLR: Climate change information for adaptation

Climate trends and projected values for Canada from 2010 to 2050: By James P. Bruce

The report – the 50th in ICLR’s Research Paper Series – provides climate data and climate change projections for 18 Canadian climatic regions.

March 1, 2011 – Many people postpone action to adapt their businesses and management activities to the changing climate because of uncertainties about future climatic conditions. It is true that the range of projected futures becomes rather large by the end of the century. This is due to uncertainties about future greenhouse gas emissions and the differences in results from various global climate models.

However, for many purposes, planning horizons are less than a century and modelled results are not very divergent out to 2050. In addition, anthropogenic factors, i.e. greenhouse gas increases, have been overwhelmingly dominant in driving changes in global and large scale regional, climate since about 1970. They will continue to dominate in the coming 4 decades. Thus, trends that have been measured and observed in climate-related factors over the past 4 decades are likely to continue or possibly intensify somewhat in the next 40 years. When extension of such trends is similar to projections to 2050 by climate models, event greater confidence can be placed in the estimates of future climate.

It is hoped that this fairly straight forward presentation of information will assist in demystifying climate change to permit initiation of pro-active adaptation measures.

Read the report here

About the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)

Established in 1998 by Canada’s property and casualty insurers, ICLR is an independent, not-for-profit research institute based in Toronto and at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. ICLR is a centre of excellence for disaster loss prevention research and education. ICLR’s research staff is internationally recognized for pioneering work in a number of fields including wind and seismic engineering, atmospheric sciences, water resources engineering and economics. Multi-disciplined research is a foundation for ICLR’s work to build communities more resilient to disasters. www.iclr.org.