Extremes more common | While some areas are hot and dry, the Prairies are in a wet phase
Prairie residents shouldn’t expect an end to extreme weather anytime soon.
Dave Sauchyn, a climate researcher at the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, said volatility will continue to be more common as the climate changes.
“It’s pretty well understood now that as you heat up the world, you can expect more severe weather. There’s just more energy in the atmosphere and so the climate is warming,” he said.
“Extreme dryness and wetness is the kind of weather we expect with a warming climate, and so we can expect more of this.”
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The weather we consider unusual will become more normal as those extremes become more common, he said.
The Prairies are already home to the most naturally variable climate on the planet because of the effects of the oceans.
“In fact, it’s even hard to detect global warming in our part of the world because temperatures are all over the place,” said Sauchyn, who is based at the University of Regina.
However, while it is getting warmer and drier overall, the region has entered a 30-year wet phase.
Sauchyn said the flooding seen through much of the area the last couple of years signaled the start of the wet phase of the 60-year climate cycle.
Scientists discovered about 10 years ago that approximately 30 years of wet conditions are followed by 30 years of dry conditions.
“We need to think 60 years at a time,” he told a Canada’s Farm Progress Show forum. “We’ve only been here about 100 years.”
Tree ring studies have shown that over the last 950 years, the most water in the North Saskatchewan River was during the 30-year period of the 1880s to 1910s.
That is when the Prairies were populated, Sauchyn said.
The droughts have usually been more severe than the flooding, particularly in the mid-1850s when they lasted for much longer than a decade. There is evidence that in 1796 the North Saskatchewan River completely dried up, he said.
It could happen again.
“We are bound to get a drought like the 1850s or 1790s,” he told his audience.
The wet phase that the region has just entered means it is mostly the young people who start farming during the good moisture conditions who will have to deal with drought in 30 years time.
“You have my sympathy,” Sauchyn said.
Meanwhile, he said the small temperature changes that will occur as the climate warms could add a month to the prairie growing season.
Data from 12 prairie weather stations shows warming of about 15 degrees since the 1880s. The effects are greater when those changes occur around -2 to 0 C.
Sauchyn showed data from April and October 2010 in one location that could have seen the last spring frost come two weeks earlier than it did and the first fall frost happen two weeks later if a few nights were just two degrees warmer.
However, he cautioned there will still be June frosts and other events that throw a wrench into what farmers actually experience.
“Weather is what we get, climate is what we expect,” he said.
Climate change is defined as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of a climate, or its variability, that persists for an extended period.
A warmer climate would have advantages for farmers, including increased productivity, the potential to grow new crops and longer seasons.
However, there are disadvantages: increased insect infestations, heat damage, more soil erosion, more problems with weeds and disease and increased moisture stress and drought.
