Farmers were warned last week to expect more weather extremes this century as global warming continues.
Weather expert Danny Blair expects the northern Great Plains to receive “more than its share” of warming, which he said could push average global temperatures up by one to 3.5 degrees this century.
That could shorten winters and provide a longer growing season for prairie farmers, but Blair offered little other comfort about the trend he sees unfolding.
With the global warming comes an increased risk of extreme temperatures, and with that comes a greater risk of drought.
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While rainfall totals may not change, Blair said they could become less frequent and more intense.
“There is evidence that more intense rainfalls in our part of the world are becoming more common.”
The Prairies may already have felt some of the effects of a changing climate. Last summer, Vanguard, Sask., received 375 millimetres of rainfall within eight hours.
Meanwhile, southern Alberta was the driest it had been since 1918.
Southeastern Manitoba was deluged with rain this past summer. The year before, fields in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskat-chewan were saturated with moisture in the spring.
And the Red River flood of 1997 is dubbed Manitoba’s flood of the century.
There were also 91 tornadoes on the Prairies last year, which was double the normal, said Blair.
Severe floods, droughts and hurricanes elsewhere in the world in recent times may also be pointing to a climate that is becoming more variable and extreme, he said.
“None of these individually mean a whole lot, but collectively, I think they do.”
Contributing to the global warming trend are the greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
Blair believes the warming trend will continue unless emissions of those gases are reduced or something unexpected occurs naturally in the environment to counter it.
“We can never say with 100 percent certainty that the climate is going to warm in the way that we think.”
