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Severe Weather & Climate Change NS SSTA. Dr. Cathy Conrad & Trevor Adams, Ed.D . (ABD) Department of Geography, Saint Mary’s University. Objectives. To introduce the concept of social, economic, and environmental vulnerability in relation to severe weather and climate change - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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DR. CATHY CONRAD &TREVOR ADAMS, ED.D. ( ABD )
DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY, SAINT MARY ’S UNIVERSI TY
Severe Weather & Climate Change
NS SSTA
Objectives
To introduce the concept of social, economic, and environmental vulnerability in relation to severe weather and climate change
To explore the link between severe weather and climate change
To provide some practical classroom activities
To provide preliminary local and global case studies
Factors that make a community more or less vulnerable to a natural hazard
Environment Canada (2003) compiled a list of the factors that make communities more or less vulnerable to natural hazards. What do you think some might be?
It is estimated that weather-, climate-, and water-related hazards may account for nearly 90% of all natural disasters.
“We’re becoming more and more vulnerable to extreme weather. If the ice storm had happened 150 years ago, it would just have been a curiosity….” (McIntyre 2006)
Table 1.1 Factors that make us less vulnerable:
Better warning and emergency-response systemsGreater economic capacityWell-established government disaster-assistance
programs and private insurance companiesBetter government policiesCommunity initiativesSocial resilienceAdvances in science and engineeringMajor risk-reduction programs, such as the Red
River Floodway
Factors that make us more vulnerable:
Population growth (extending into hazard-prone areas)
UrbanizationEnvironmental degradationUrban expansion into hazard-prone areasLoss of community memory about hazardous events
due to increased mobilityAn aging populationGreater reliance on power, water, transportation,
and communication systemsHistorical overreliance on technological solutions
How is severe weather defined and classified?
EconomicSocialEnvironmental
“severity” is relative and a matter of perspective
What constitutes “severe”?
“…any destructive weather.”(AMS Glossary of Meteorology)
The concept of a “Climate Severity Index”
http://www.chooselethbridge.ca
Links to climate change and natural climatic oscillations
Are extreme weather events becoming more frequent and if so is this linked to climate change?
Putting weather extremes in a climate-change context is challenging for several reasons: Extremes are rare by definition, which makes it
difficult to draw statistical conclusions The most severe weather tends to affect areas smaller
than global climate models can depict
Practical Activities
Tips and suggestions Integrate climate change activities over a long period
of time Maybe entire school year
Compare current weather against known climate norms, track, graph, analyze, compare
Use readily available data Environment Canada
Global Connection: The Gambia
Climate Change and Severe Weather not a local issues, a global issue Remember our definition
Severe weather is a relative termExample
The Gambia
Perceptions of Climate Change
in The Gambia
IPCC Perspectives on Africa
“New studies confirm that Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity. Some adaptation to current climate variability is taking place; however, this may be insufficient for future changes in climate.”
- IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007
IPCC Perspectives on Africa
“Between 1961 and 2000, there was an increase in the number of warm spells over southern and western Africa, and a decrease in the number of extremely cold days”
“In West Africa, a decline in annual rainfall has been observed since the end of the 1960s, with a decrease of 20 to 40% noted between…1968-1990”
“Complex feedback mechanisms, mainly due to deforestation/land-cover change and changes in atmospheric dust loadings, also play a role in climate variability, particularly for drought persistence in the Sahel and its surrounding areas”