LANIGAN, Sask. — Western Canada may be going through a turbulent, transitional phase that will eventually lead to a new, long-term climate regime that is more stable and predictable.
“I actually think what’s happening is that we’re changing from one climate regime to another,” said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, during the Western Beef Development Centre’s annual field day in Lanigan late last month.
“And as nature sorts things out and completes that … (transition), we will continue to see more of that variability. But I think we are moving toward a time and a new regime where things are more stable and more static and more dependable.”
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He said changing land management practices and new land use trends may be to blame for the volatile weather and changing climate.
“When you go from a prairie mixed grassland to a wheat field to a parking lot, you change the reflectivity and this could very well change the conditions.”
Prairie producers have dealt with extreme droughts and extreme floods since the turn of the century.
Annual precipitation levels have become less predictable and extreme temperatures, both record highs and record lows, have become more common.
Phillips said western producers don’t have to look far to find examples of extreme variability.
Farmers in northwestern Saskatchewan and northeastern Alberta experienced their driest spring on record this year while others in southeastern Saskatchewan are experiencing their wettest year ever.
Environment Canada statistics collected during the past 63 years show that an inordinately high number of record-precipitation and record-temperature events have occurred in the West during the past 10 years.
Phillips said that variability is making it harder for farmers to make calculated decisions about crop rotations, seeding dates and marketing strategies.
“It’s getting hard to say what’s normal. It’s almost like this back and forth, feast or famine kind of situation and it’s a pattern we’ve been seeing a lot more of in the last 10 or 12 years,” he said.
“It’s a new world and there are more challenges out there from a weather point of view. The weather has become less predictable and so have the seasons. That’s creating new challenges for farmers.”
Phillips said extreme variability in short-term weather patterns is most likely an indication of global climate change.
And while short-term fluctuations in weather patterns may be causing headaches for producers, he said the long-term impact of climate change won’t necessarily be negative.
For example, global climate change could potentially result in longer growing seasons for western Canadian farmers and more annual precipitation.
If that happens, and if extreme fluctuations in annual weather patterns begin to subside, the effects of climate change on Western Canada’s farm economy could be beneficial.
New, higher value crops could be introduced and crop rotations could be altered significantly.
Phillips said he would like to see farmers take a more active role in monitoring local temperature and precipitation patterns.
A new understanding of weather patterns might emerge if every farm had a weather station and every producer kept local statistics on rainfall, temperatures and growing degree and frost-free days.
“Farmers plan around normal, but normal no longer exists,” Phillips said.
