Canadians should prepare for a future that is up to 5 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new federal report that summarizes the latest science on how a warming planet will affect the country.
The second edition of Canada's Changing Climate Report, released this week, warns that under current global climate policies, average warming in Canada could reach as high as 5 C by the year 2100. That is roughly twice the global average, because high-latitude regions warm faster than the rest of the planet.
A hotter Canada
The report lays out what that future would look like. Canadians should expect decades of more severe wildfire seasons, more extreme heat days, rising seas, thawing permafrost and diminishing water resources as glaciers shrink.
Those changes are not distant scenarios, the authors note. Wildfire smoke already blankets parts of the country most summers, and heat waves have become longer and more intense in cities that were once spared.
Climate science with more confidence
The report is a synthesis of research on how climate change affects Canada, and the new edition states its central finding with greater confidence than before: burning fossil fuels, which it calls human activities, is responsible for the warming.
Scientists describe the overall picture as far from benign, even at lower warming levels, and say some impacts are now unavoidable because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.
Floods add urgency
The summary landed days after flash floods swamped roads and basements in Toronto, a city hit by several intense rainfall events in recent years. Climate advocates pointed to those floods as an example of the disruptions the report describes.
The report is not purely a warning. It says deeper and faster emissions cuts would hold warming well below the worst case, and that investing in adaptation now will lower the costs later. But it is blunt about the trade-off: every delay locks in more change that Canadians will have to live with.