Climate Change: National Impacts
The Prairies
Most scenarios suggest that the semi-arid regions of the Prairies can expect an increase in the frequency and length of droughts. Average crop yields could fall by 10-30 per cent. Increased demand for water pumping and summer cooling and decreased winter demand due to higher temperatures could push electrical utilities into a summer peak load position at the same time as hydropower production is reduced by decreased water flow. This could result in increased thermal power production with an increase in fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Semi-permanent and seasonal wetlands could dry up, leading to reduced production of waterfowl and other wildlife species.
The Arctic
Future winter temperature increases of 5-7°C over the mainland and much of the Arctic Islands and modest cooling in the extreme eastern Arctic are projected. Summer temperatures are expected to increase up to 5°C on the mainland and 1-2°C over marine areas. Annual precipitation is expected to increase up to 25 per cent.
These changes in temperature and precipitation would reduce the tundra and taiga/tundra ecosystems by as much as two thirds of their present size. More than one half of the discontinuous permafrost area could disappear.
Wildlife would also be affected, with many species in fish and streams shifting northward 150 km for each degree increase in air temperature and High Arctic Peary caribou, muskoxen and polar bears running the risk of extinction.
Eastern Canada
Anywhere from 3-8°C average annual warming by the latter part of the 21st century is projected, leading to fewer weeks of snow, a longer growing season, less moisture in the soil and an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts.
Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, whose impacts could include greater risk of floods; coastal erosion; coastal sedimentation; and reductions in sea and river ice.
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