Expert warns fire season in northern British Columbia getting worse

Mike Hager in the Globe and Mail: A massive wildfire in northern B.C. shows that the province’s forests are increasingly primed for such blazes because of climate change and the El Nino weather pattern, an expert says. The 240-square-kilometre fire, first reported late Friday on May 8 near Little Bobtail Lake southwest of Prince George, is only 15-per-cent contained, according to a Monday update from the B.C. Wildfire Branch.

Since Saturday, heavy winds almost doubled the size of the blaze and halted the progress of 270 firefighters, according to the branch.

Lori Daniels, an associate professor in the University of B.C.’s forestry faculty, said Monday that the Little Bobtail Lake fire is symptomatic of more intense and longer fire seasons the province is now experiencing. Global warming has driven this change, Prof. Daniels said.

She added, however, that it has also been fuelled by debris that has built up after decades of firefighters stopping smaller, more frequent fires that once rejuvenated forests with low-intensity burns. “I hope this is a cautionary message to anybody working in, living in and using our forests, that we have to be careful,” Prof. Daniels said. “Even the forests in what we consider a wetter, cooler forest type within the province currently are burning at a higher intensity, which also shows other parts of the province are hot and dry.”

B.C. could continue to warm over the next 100 years, according to some global climate-change models, exacerbating the forest-fire threat....

A 2003 fire in British Columbia, via NASA 

Report warns of soaring risk of ‘mega-fires’ in British Columbia

Bethany Lindsay and Larry Pynn in the Vancouver Sun: As the planet heats up and the risk of “mega fires” rises, B.C. will no longer be able to lean on its world-class wildfire-fighting teams to keep people and property safe, according to a draft provincial document.

The Forests Ministry paper, called Climate Change Adaption Action Plan for Wildfire Management 2014-2024, suggests fire prevention should become the top priority of the province.

“It is not an option to continue to increase fire suppression response and associated costs, because even the most aggressive action would neither be safe nor effective for the extreme wildfire events such as those seen in Kelowna in 2003 and Slave Lake in 2010,” reads the draft, obtained through a freedom of information request.

“During these events, suppression response cannot be relied upon to protect communities or natural resource values. The only protection provided will be the protection established before the fire, provided through wildland-urban interface fuel reduction and landscape fire management.”

The document, dated last April, says the average temperature in B.C. is predicted to rise by four degrees by 2080. That warming trend, combined with the higher rate of wildfire spread in forests affected by the mountain pine beetle, means that “mega fires” will be increasingly common.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada has predicted that severe wildfires will happen at least 50 per cent more often by 2050....

Generic fire image by the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Playing out future flooding scenarios

Sandor Gyarmati in the Delta Optimist (British Columbia): A new video game being developed at UBC will give Delta students the chance to become city planners dealing with the implications of global warming and a rising sea level.

Future Delta 2.0 is a video game project led by Dr. Stephen Sheppard at UBC and Dr. Aleksandra Dulic of UBC-Okanagan. Having elements similar the interactive city-building game Sim City, the game will enable players to become city planners dealing with the implications of global warming and sea level rise.

"The video game is initially, at least, for high school kids," said Sheppard, director of UBC's Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP). "Working with some schools in Delta, it's very early in the life of this project. We were funded to work on a climate change video game that was to be a place-based game in Delta, so Delta people and Delta school kids would play the game and they would see places they know and recognize.

"It would also deal with other kinds of issues, including sea level rise and its effects on farming, and also how people respond in terms of community energy and renewable energy, cutting their carbon footprints and what their community would look like. It's to be a fun game that's educational for students who are studying climate change in their curriculum and in sciences classes. It would make it meaningful for them but also fun," he explained....

A blue heron in Vancouver, shot by Eugene Sit, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Flooding, sea level rise among city's greatest projected risks

Canadian Underwriter: A risk assessment of local climate change events for Victoria, British Columbia as projected to 2050 indicates flooding and sea level rise are among the greatest risks. “The projected impacts of most climate change-related events were determined to, individually, have low or medium risk. In reality, our community will experience more than one impact at a time, so this could translate to a larger combined risk,” notes a statement from the City of Victoria.

The recently completed assessment cites an estimated sea level rise of 45 centimetres by 2050, most visible during winter high tides. By 2100, the extreme high estimate of sea level rise for Victoria is 0.89 to 0.94 metres. Couple higher sea levels with more frequent and intense storm events – which the assessment pegs at as much as 15% – and winter may prove more eventful.

“With the increase of intensity and frequency of winter storms, in conjunction with high winter tides, we will also see an increase in storm surges, waves that are pushed onshore from high winds,” the city reports. This combination may put some buildings and infrastructure at risk.

While localized flooding is already a yearly event in the region, larger floods “can create substantial property damage. Combined with other storm-related impacts, downed trees, power outages, road closures and insurance losses, the late fall and early winter storm season in Victoria is likely to present higher risks.”...

Victoria's inner harbor, shot by Dmgerman, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climate change to bring more severe wildfires to British Columbia

Michael Vinkin Lee in the Vancouver Sun: The number of major forest fires in B.C. will likely increase by 50 per cent or more in the next 40 years according to a recent report on climate change. Telling the Weather Story, released this week by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, addresses altering weather patterns across the country in the coming decades and urges Canadians to adjust to the realities of climate change.

The study predicts B.C. can expect an increase in wildfires over the average of nearly 2,000 blazes a year between 2000 and 2010. Furthermore, the province will likely see a host of other weather-related issues like warmer temperatures, declining — and, in some regions, disappearing — mountain snowpacks, more intense rainfall during the winter, and drier summers. The number of wildfires sparked by lightning strikes — responsible for nearly 60 per cent of fires — is also expected to rise.

“It’s not a just a possibility,” said Dr. Gordon McBean, the report’s lead researcher. “There’s a very real probability it will happen.” McBean, a climatologist and professor at the University of Western Ontario, conducted the research with cooperation from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, where he also serves as policy chairman.

He explained the study arrived at the predicted figures by linking existing data on blazes caused by lightning to climate conditions. The information was then put through a simulation that projected ahead to 2030 and 2060.

“The scientific community [behind the report] is very confident,” McBean said. “These projections are based on very solid science. Climate change is already happening in Canada.”...

Northwest Crown Fire Experiment, Northwest Territories, Canada. Photograph used by permission of the USDA Forest Service, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Heavier rain major cause of Tsolum River flooding

Philip Round in Canada.com: Experts probing why the Tsolum River has been running so high in recent years have concluded it's mainly because it's raining more heavily and frequently than in the past. Suggestions that the impact of logging operations might be contributing to much greater run-off from the watershed "cannot explain the occurrence of high flows on the Tsolum River in 2009 and 2010."

But they acknowledge that assessment is based on available information, particularly from TimberWest itself, about changes to its forest management practices over the past 50 years. Northwest Hydraulic Consultants (NHC) was commissioned to conduct the detailed flood hydrology investigation of the watershed by three partners who shared the cost - Comox Valley Regional District, the City of Courtenay and TimberWest Forest Corporation. Its final report will be presented to the regional district this afternoon (Tuesday).

Local governments got involved because of concerns over more frequent flooding in Courtenay and why it might be happening. Around 2010 there were what NHC call "three flood events" involving the Tsolum - one of them the biggest in 46 years of measuring flows. But having analyzed available statistics, the consultants found the Tsolum was not unusual in carrying huge quantities of water at that time.

"There have been a number of large floods on the east coast of Vancouver Island during the last five years that have either been the largest or second largest over the period of record," the report notes. "These include floods on the Tsolum, Puntledge, Oyster, Quinsam, Englishman, Cowichan and Koksilah Rivers." And having compared the data for several rivers between Duncan and Port Hardy, NHC concludes: "The recent upsurge in flooding is closely associated with extreme precipitation events."...

Locator map of British Columbia

Figuring out adaptation issues for infrastructure in Canada

Jed Anderson in the Castlegar News describes how one Canadian group is grappling with adaptation: A group of engineers from the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC) were in Castlegar on April 12 to participate in a workshop on infrastructure vulnerability due to climate change. Some of the PIEVC engineers and technicians traveled from as far as Edmonton and Winnipeg to attend the Impacts and the Process for Adaptation workshop. They met with local engineers, Columbia Basin Trust employees, the Ministry of Transportation, and municipal officials from Castlegar, the Slocan Valley and Nelson.

The focus of the meeting was a consideration of Castlegar’s storm water collection capacity in the light of expected changes in the local climate. PIEVC engineer Jeff O’Driscoll explained that through a process of group activities, the participants would be able to “learn by doing” in order to implement a climate change analysis in Castlegar themselves.

O’Driscoll described the process as a tutorial. The group activity came after a series of presentations. Participants were instructed to analyze data on a theoretical prairie community called Anyville in order to learn how to work through the process of a climate change adaptation study.

Monday’s meeting was part of the Communities Adapting to Climate Change Initiative underway in Castlegar since winter. The initiative aims to help the City and residents deal with expected changes to weather patterns due to climate change….

Side shot of the Alexandra Bridge in British Columbia. This bridge carries traffic along the Trans-Canada Highway over the Fraser River. Shot by Nebrot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license