Publications Library

Rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events are already affecting Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and our Communities of Care. Chronic stresses and acute shocks are creating a “new climate reality” for health facilities and service delivery, and reshaping our working context.

With this series of reports, Lower Mainland Facilities Management (LMFM) demonstrates forward-thinking public sector leadership; positions health authorities to meet legislated requirements for addressing climate risk and reducing emissions; and, enables major infrastructure projects to assess climate resilience.

A forward-thinking group at Nanaimo Hospital developed a comprehensive climate risk assessment matrix which is becoming an integral part of their organizational decision-making. Future hospital retrofits will potentially include increased cooling capacity, enhanced air filtration, and other measures to reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the facility and its patients from the potential effects of climate change.

This edition of the PCIC Update covers work on modelling Fraser River streamflow temperatures, recently published wildfire research, the release of the PCIC Climate Explorer tool (PCEX), a new collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Climate Services and PCIC, recent research in precipitation extremes, work on incorporating the findings of climate science into engineering design, a staff profile on Yaqiong Wang, the release of the 2017-2018 Corporate Report, as well as the latest Science Brief, staff changes, recent publications and the ongoing Pacific Climate Seminar Series.

In response to ongoing and future-projected global warming, mid-latitude, nival river basins are expected to transition from a snowmelt-dominated flow regime to a nival–pluvial one with an earlier spring freshet of reduced magnitude. There is, however, a rich variation in responses that depends on factors such as the topographic complexity of the basin and the strength of maritime influences. We illustrate the potential effects of a strong maritime influence by studying future changes in cold season flow variability in the Fraser River Basin (FRB) of British Columbia, a large extratropical watershed extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. We use a process-based hydrological model driven by an ensemble of 21 statistically downscaled simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), following the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP 8.5).

Warming under RCP 8.5 leads to reduced winter snowfall, shortening the average snow accumulation season by about one-third. Despite this, large increases in cold season rainfall lead to unprecedented cold season peak flows and increased overall runoff variability in the VIC simulations. Increased cold season rainfall is shown to be the dominant climatic driver in the Coast Mountains, contributing 60 % to mean cold season runoff changes in the 2080s. Cold season runoff at the outlet of the basin increases by 70 % by the 2080s, and its interannual variability more than doubles when compared to the 1990s, suggesting substantial challenges for operational flow forecasting in the region. Furthermore, almost half of the basin (45 %) transitions from a snow-dominated runoff regime in the 1990s to a primarily rain-dominated regime in the 2080s, according to a snowmelt pulse detection algorithm. While these projections are consistent with the anticipated transition from a nival to a nival–pluvial hydrologic regime, the marked increase in FRB cold season runoff is likely linked to more frequent landfalling atmospheric rivers in the region projected in the CMIP5 models, providing insights for other maritime-influenced extratropical basins.

Snow‐dominated watersheds are bellwethers of climate change. Hydroclimate projections in such basins often find reductions in annual peak runoff due to decreased snowpack under global warming. British Columbia's Fraser River Basin (FRB) is a large, nival basin with exposure to moisture‐laden atmospheric rivers originating in the Pacific Ocean. Landfalling atmospheric rivers over the region in winter are projected to increase in both strength and frequency in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate models. We investigate future changes in hydrology and annual peak daily streamflow in the FRB using a hydrologic model driven by a bias‐corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ensemble. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (8.5), the FRB evolves toward a nival‐pluvial regime featuring an increasing association of extreme rainfall with annual peak daily flow, a doubling in cold season peak discharge, and a decrease in the return period of the largest historical flow, from a 1‐in‐200‐year to 1‐in‐50‐year event by the late 21st century.

Future sediment dynamics may be affected by changing climates or hydrological regimes because of the close link between hydrology and sediment erosion, deposition, and transport. Previously, investigations of these potential changes have been constrained by a combination of limited observational data, hydrological drivers, and appropriate mechanistic models. Additionally, there is often ambiguity regarding how to disentangle the impacts of climate and hydrology from direct human factors such as reservoirs and land‐use change, which often exert more control over sediment dynamics. In this study, we utilize a recently developed, large‐scale, distributed, mechanistic sediment transport model to project future sediment erosion, deposition, and transportation within the Fraser River Basin in British Columbia, Canada—a basin with historical water flux and sediment load observations and limited anthropogenic influences upstream of its delta. The sediment model is driven by synthetic land‐surface hydrology derived from Scenarios A1B, A2, and B1 of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, which were provided by the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. Resulting simulations of water flux and sediment load from 1965 to 1994 are first validated against observational data then compared with future projections. Future projections show an overall increase in annual hillslope erosion and in‐channel transportation, a shift towards earlier spring peak erosion and transportation, and longer persistence of the sediment signal through the year. These shifts in timing and annual yield may have deleterious effects on spawning sockeye salmon and are insufficient to counteract future coastal retreat caused by sea‐level rise.

This is the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium's 2017-2018 Corporate Report.

This newsletter discusses the IPCC's Special Report on a global warming of 1.5 °C, the summer of 2018 in BC, supporting agriculture in the Fraser Valley, PCIC's new Seasonal Maps Portal, Columbia Basin Trust workshops and Dr. Jana Sillmann's visit. The newsletter also has a staff spotlight on Matthew Benstead, covers talks delivered by Drs. Jana Sillmann and Whitney Huang, the most recent PCIC Science Brief on Paris Accord emissions and temperature limits, as well as PCIC publications and staff changes.

Modeling sediment transport through large basins presents a challenging problem. The relation between water flux and sediment load is complex, and substantial erosion and transport can occur over small spatial and temporal scales. Analysis of large‐scale basins often relies on lumped empirical models that do not consider spatial or subannual variability. In this study, we adapt a small‐scale, mechanistic, distributed suspended sediment transport model for application to large basins. The model is integrated into the Terrestrial Hydrology Model with Biochemistry to make use of the Terrestrial Hydrology Model with Biochemistry's dynamic water routing. The coupled model is applied to the 230,000‐km2 Fraser River Basin in British Columbia, Canada, using climatic and hydrological inputs provided by a historical run of the Variable Infiltration Capacity model. Hourly simulations are aggregated into monthly and long‐term averages which are compared against observations. Simulated long‐term lake sedimentation values are within an order of magnitude of observations, and monthly load simulations have an average R2 of 0.70 across the five study stations with available data. Model results indicate that sediment loads from tributaries do not heavily influence dynamics along the main stem and suggest the importance of network connectivity. Sensitivity analysis indicates that models may benefit from characterizing bed load irrespective of its contribution to total sediment load. Historical simulations over the 1965–2004 period reveal important changes in sediment dynamics that could not be captured with a lumped model, including a decrease in basin sediment load interannual variability driven by changes in runoff and load variability within a key subbasin.