DR. CATHY CONRAD & TREVOR ADAMS, ED.D. (ABD) DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY, SAINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY 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 systems Greater economic capacity Well-established government disaster-assistance programs and private insurance companies Better government policies Community initiatives Social resilience Advances in science and engineering Major risk-reduction programs, such as the Red River Floodway

Factors that make us more vulnerable: Population growth (extending into hazard-prone areas) Urbanization Environmental degradation Urban expansion into hazard-prone areas Loss of community memory about hazardous events due to increased mobility An aging population Greater reliance on power, water, transportation, and communication systems Historical overreliance on technological solutions

How is severe weather defined and classified? Economic Social Environmental “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”

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 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 term Example  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… ” “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”