By Anna Delaney
Our changing climate is causing some to worry that our springtime rainfalls in South Western Ontario will be more frequent and more intense than in previous years.
One of those worriers is James P. Bruce, a Canadian policy representative for the Soil and Water Conservation Society. He spoke about this issue to a small group of students and faculty at the University of Western Ontario on Monday. His talk, Water Resources in a Changing Climate, looked at how greenhouse gas emissions in the past 40 years can predict how much warming we can expect in the next 40 years, he said.
“Since greenhouse gases are going to drive the planet in the next 30 or 40 years, I think it’s kind of a sensible thing to do to take a look at what’s happened in the last 40 years,” said Bruce.
Bruce’s expertise in the field of environmental research has brought him a great deal of acclaim. While he is currently a policy representative, he is also a chair for the Expert Panel on Groundwater for the Council of Canadian Academics, and has had several different positions within Environment Canada. He has written several books and articles about climate change, and has been awarded honorary doctorates from McMaster University and the University of Waterloo.
From the research Bruce conducted over these past few decades, he has found that the changes in climate are happening a lot faster than originally expected because our greenhouse gases are too high, explained Bruce. Higher greenhouse gas emissions cause warming of the lower atmosphere and climate, a fact that scientists have know for years, said Bruce. Global temperatures go up when greenhouse gases go up, he said. And these changes are going to significantly effect precipitation. Although the total precipitation redistribution won’t be affected too much on a global scale, there are certain places which might be affected. The region surrounding London can expect more intense storms.
“While the total precipitation is going to be redistributed somewhat, the total amount over the globe isn’t going to change much,” said Bruce. “But the atmosphere, as it warms, holds more water vapour…while you might not get more total precipitation, you will get heavier precipitation.”
Bruce looked to the Arctic to prove his point. Baffin Island had a “very heavy rain event” in June 2008, which caused flash floods and actually separated the town by a gully, he said. Because of the floods, the town had to discharge sewage to a nearby fjord, and had great difficulty reestablishing the only man-made bridge in it’s National Park.
“It was quite a disaster,” Bruce said. “What happened here is this permafrost that they were resting on was thawing, and with this rush of water, down from the mountain, it just wiped out all of the soil above bedrock.”
One of Bruce’s audience members at the talk was Dianne Cunningham, the director of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management in the Richard Ivy School of Business at UWO. The Centre aims to development sound public policy through a forum for business, academia, and government, to think globally, act strategically and contribute to their societies, according to the Centre’s website. For Cunningham, Bruce’s talk brought up points that she works towards at the Lawrence Centre.
“Government and academics and business should work together to get good public policy, and that would be true of this issue of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, talking about rivers and water, and definitely climate change,” she said.
Bruce agrees that government involvement is key in taking action for the changing climate. Especially in regards to basins, because the majority of Canadians live in transboundary basins.
“What we would like to see is that the federal government provides some guidelines as to how they would like things developing in those basins, not a detailed plan, but a framework for these major national basins,” said Bruce.
“Then the provinces could develop their plans for major chunks of those basins within the frameworks set forth by the federal government. And then the municipalities and conservation authorities could get to work on the local level within that double framework. And I think something like that might work if everybody put their mind to it.”
Although the three levels of government are important, knowledge and learning are also key, according to Cunningham. It’s talks like the one given by Bruce that begin the motivation to learn more for our society to being to see a difference.
“The most important thing is that people get the message, and that it’s believable and that it’s balanced,” she said.