{"id":184,"date":"2014-06-13T19:41:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T19:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/geography\/?post_type=chapter&p=184"},"modified":"2014-08-29T13:47:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T20:47:43","slug":"9-3-climate-and-environment-bc","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/geography\/chapter\/9-3-climate-and-environment-bc\/","title":{"raw":"Climate Change and Environment in BC","rendered":"Climate Change and Environment in BC"},"content":{"raw":"Climate change<\/strong>\u00a0is a significant and lasting reality in our world today. It\u00a0refers to change in\u00a0weather patterns\u00a0over time, and it\u00a0includes a variation in the average weather patterns\u00a0and\/or more extreme weather patterns such as increased precipitation or drought.\u00a0Natural factors such as biotic\u00a0processes, variations in\u00a0solar radiation\u00a0received by Earth,\u00a0plate tectonics and\u00a0volcanic eruptions can have an influence on climate change, but by far the most significant is the impact of human activities (Dessai\u00a0et al., 2004).\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_182\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Figure<\/a> Figure 8.4 Ten indicators of a warming world[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThink about the richness of BC's natural resources such as\u00a0clean water and air, timber, game, fish, scenery, flood-control natural barriers, metals, minerals and natural gas; many of these natural goods and services are impossible to replace. How does climate change impact the province?\r\n\r\nIn many parts of BC, snowpacks are projected to continue to decrease. Less snow means that there is less snowmelt in the spring and less runoff in summer. These declining amounts of water affect\u00a0many industries,\u00a0such as\u00a0hydropower, agriculture and\u00a0fisheries.\u00a0While precipitation trends from normal have increased (see Figure 2),\u00a0the increase in negative variation in spring indicates risk of variation events rather than simply the risk of\u00a0less evapotranspiration and precipitation over time.\u00a0Where glaciers contribute to the volume of water flow, long-term loss of glacier mass will further increase water shortages.\r\n\r\nWe\u00a0already have examples of the effect of\u00a0less snow with the\u00a0seasonal droughts of 2003 and 2009, which show\u00a0the vulnerability of community and irrigation water supplies and point to\u00a0what we may face\u00a0in the future. These seasonal droughts, along with high interface forests, contributed to the Okanagan\u00a0forest fire of 2003, and\u00a0increased temperatures have contributed\u00a0to the epidemic of the mountain pine beetle.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_183\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Figure<\/a> Figure 8.5. Seasonal mean precipitation percentage departure from 1961 to 1990 normal and linear trend for Canada, 1948 to 2009[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEach person can make a difference in a small way, but as a province some of the actions needed include:\r\n