There's a new normal for weather in Charlottetown, and it's warmer
CBC
Environment and Climate Change Canada has updated its climate normals as measured at Charlottetown Airport, with the data showing the continuing impact of climate change.
The federal agency determines normal weather at any particular monitoring station using 30-year averages, and updates those normals every 10 years. Recently, it updated the baseline for normal weather at Charlottetown Airport from the span 1981-2010 to the span 1991-2020.
"It's warmer, and this is not surprising," said Environment and Climate Change Canada research scientist Megan Kirchmeier-Young.
"We have a pretty strong warming trend across all of Canada, across all regions of Canada. This warming is because of climate change, because of global temperature change increases… We are seeing the impacts of that all across Canada, including in Atlantic Canada and in P.E.I."
For the whole year, the average temperature at Charlottetown Airport is now 0.2 C higher than it used to be. While that doesn't seem like much, its impact can be seen at the extremes of Island weather.
Consider that in the database of new normals:
Comparing the two periods also shows some changes in precipitation. There is a slight drop in annual amounts, but spring precipitation in particular is down double digits.
But Kirchmeier-Young cautions against reading too much into the changes shown in the new 1991-2020 normal.
"The two periods, they overlap by 20 years. There's a lot of the same years going into those normals," she said. "In the climate scheme, that is still a pretty small amount of time, 10 years," she said.
But she notes that temperature changes in the normals match up with research Environment and Climate Change Canada has done looking at how the climate in Atlantic Canada changed from 1948 to 2016.
It found a 0.7 C increase in temperature in Atlantic Canada over those 68 years, with higher changes in the summer and autumn.
Findings are likely to be more reliable if they cover a longer period of time and multiple stations are measuring the data, said Kirchmeier-Young, which is why in that particular study, Environment and Climate Change Canada examined six regions in Canada, rather than focusing on particular locations.
For people concerned about the impact of climate change on P.E.I., the last few years have been especially worrisome.
The three years following those used for the new normal have been very warm, measuring 1.3 C above the 1991-2020 average.
When the holiday season comes calling, one particular potato dumpling becomes an important fixture on many dinner tables: perogies.
It has been 118 years since Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church's congregation first gathered to worship.
A new First Nations immersive language program inspired is looking to help preserve Plains Cree, a dialect of the Cree language.
A new clinic opening early next year on British Columbia's Vancouver Island has a different structure it hopes will help attract and retain family doctors amid an ongoing physician shortage.
After Alberta's population boomed through the first half of 2024, its growth slowed during the third quarter of this year.
The 2025 Folklore Festival is cancelled citing rising costs and safety issues impacting the festival's plans.
Nearly 200 volunteers are slated to sort and pack urgently needed food donations at the Daily Bread Food Bank's centre in Etobicoke on Saturday.
When Eileen Nurse was a kid, her family would decorate the mantle above the fireplace with miniature houses and fake trees every December, creating a little winter scene. So when Nurse, now 61, bought her first Christmas-themed Lego set in 2010, a new tradition was born.
Summerside's council voted earlier this week to repeal the city's decades-old taxi bylaw, deeming it "redundant."
For Whitehorse resident Charlie-Rose Pelletier, insomnia is something she's dealt with on a regular basis for the last two decades — but she says it became worse after she moved to the Yukon from Quebec a few years ago.
It's hard to imagine President Emmanuel Macron of France joking about annexing Belgium.