The drought across the southern Prairies is the worst on record but it
is too soon to blame it on global warming, says one of Environment
Canada’s most prominent weather commentators.
In saying that, David Phillips, star of the department’s weather
calendar and a regular source of media weather explanations, was
cautiously disagreeing with the view of his political boss.
Environment minister David Anderson has defended government intentions
to sign an international greenhouse gas reduction treaty by insisting
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that the cost of allowing global warming to escalate would be greater
than the economic cost of curtailing emissions.
He has used the prairie drought as an example of the cost of global
warming.
“We’re looking at some quite severe changes and it’s no good just
looking at some numbers concocted for a specific industry and not
taking a look at a broader picture of the areas such as in southern
Alberta facing a drought, which I’m told by the Canadian Wheat Board
will have an impact of $5 billion,” Anderson said March 1 after
speaking to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture in Halifax.
In a March 8 interview, climatologist Phillips said it is not that
simple.
The southern Prairies is going through the driest period on record, he
said.
“In southern Alberta, southwestern Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba,
the water equivalent of the snow cover on the ground as of March 1 was
less than 50 percent of normal,” said a March 7 analysis from
Environment Canada.
“If the low snow cover conditions persist in these areas, there will be
very little runoff produced at spring melt, which could be a concern
for agriculture.”
But he was reluctant to blame global warming.
Phillips said there is no doubt the planet, and Canada, are warming.
The year 2001 produced the warmest winter on record in southern Ontario
and southern Quebec.
The lack of moisture on the southern Prairies is unprecedented in
modern times. But is this, as Anderson says, a sign of global warming
and the multi-billion dollar consequence of doing nothing to curb
emission of greenhouse gases?
“It might be but I don’t think you can stand up and say it is,” said
Phillips. He said it also is difficult to know if this warming trend is
unique in history and therefore possibly related to human-induced
greenhouse gas emissions.
There is some evidence that the world went through warming periods long
before industrial greenhouse gas emissions were an issue. But there
often are no records and it is impossible to prove it in history.
