B.C. Climate News: Los Angeles fires and winter drought likely linked to ocean heat | Scientists confirm 2024 was Canada and the world’s hottest year on record

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Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in British Columbia and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the up-to-date science.

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Check back every Saturday for more climate and environmental news or sign up for our Climate Connected newsletter HERE.

In climate news this week:

• Los Angeles fires and winter drought likely linked to ocean heat
• Scientists confirm 2024 was Canada and the world’s hottest year on record
• Quebec planes and B.C. helicopters battle L.A. wildfires
• B.C. has five years left to meet its 30×30 conservation target. Can it be done?

Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature.

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The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.

According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”

As of Jan. 5, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen to 425.40 parts per million (ppm) from just over 421 ppm one year ago and under 320 ppm in 1960, according to NOAA data measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii.

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Climate change quick facts:

• The Earth is now about 1.3 C warmer than it was in the 1800s.
• 2024 was hottest on record globally, beating the last record in 2023.
• The global average temperature in 2023 reached 1.48 C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.
• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.
• On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, the temperature could increase by as much 3.6 C this century, according to the IPCC.
• In April, 2022 greenhouse gas concentrations reached record new highs and show no sign of slowing.
• Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 C and 2.7 per cent per year to stay below 2 C.
• 97 per cent of climate scientists agree that the climate is warming and that humans are the cause.

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(Source: United Nations IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, UNEP, NASA, climatedata.ca)

Latest News

Los Angeles fires and winter drought likely linked to ocean heat

Winter used to be the one-time of year Southern California didn’t have to worry about wildfires. Instead, the region has started to burn.

January is the heart of California’s rainy season, when cool storms from the Gulf of Alaska paint hillsides green with new grass. But this year, a stubborn high-pressure ridge has created a virtual force field near Los Angeles that has blocked moisture for months.

Now, an outbreak of strong offshore winds has triggered an out-of-control wildfire in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighbourhood near Malibu, affecting almost 3,000 acres and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate. Gusts of wind are forecast to be as strong as 161 kilometres per hour and last most of the week, with no rain in sight.

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Other states have struggled with dangerously dry weather in recent months. Persistent high pressure over the U.S. Northeast last fall led to widespread brush fires — including hundreds in New York City — and the region’s most severe drought in more than two decades. High pressure systems usually break down under the influence of other weather patterns, but the ridges over both the northeast and California have lasted an unusually long time.

That may not be a coincidence. Researchers say prolonged fall and winter dry spells are likely linked to warming oceans, which can cause the jet stream — the band of fast-moving winds that control weather across North America — to wander off its usual track. That leaves high-pressure ridges stuck in place. It’s another example of how a warming world wreaks havoc with weather.

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Read the full story here.

— Bloomberg

Intensifying climate ‘whiplash’ set the stage for devastating California fires: Los Angeles Times

The devastating wildfires that have ravaged Southern California erupted after a stark shift from wet weather to extremely dry weather — a phenomenon scientists describe as hydro-climate whiplash, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

New research shows these abrupt wet-to-dry and dry-to-wet swings, which can worsen wildfires, flooding and other hazards, are growing more frequent and intense because of human-caused climate change, the report says.

“We’re in a whiplash event now, wet to dry, in Southern California,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who led the research, told the L.A. Times. “The evidence shows that hydro-climate whiplash has already increased due to global warming, and further warming will bring about even larger increases.”

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The extreme weather shift over the last two years in Southern California is one of many such dramatic swings that scientists have documented worldwide in recent years, the report says.

Read the full story here.

— Los Angeles Times

Scientists confirm 2024 was Canada and the world’s hottest year on record

Climate scientists released new data Friday confirming 2024 was the planet’s hottest year on record, as drought and wind fuelled wildfires continue to devastate Los Angeles.

It was a year marked by deadly floods, heat waves, drought, hurricanes and wildfires, including the one that burned much of Jasper, Alta.

Last year not only beat 2023’s record heat but soared to 1.6 C above pre-industrial levels, making 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5 C warming threshold set out in the Paris Accord, according to several climate modelling agencies including Copernicus in Europe and the NOAA and Berkeley Earth in the U.S.

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Similar agencies in the U.K. and in Japan also found a record was set, although numbers vary slightly.

Robert Rohde, chief scientist with Berkeley Earth, told Postmedia the national annual average temperature in Canada during 2024 slightly exceeded the same averages for 2010 and 2023 to set a record.

Read the full story here.

— Tiffany Crawford

Quebec planes and B.C. helicopters battle L.A. wildfires

Firefighting aircraft provided by the Quebec government and a B.C.-based company are helping to battle the massive wildfires tearing through the Los Angeles area.

They include a pair of Canadian-made water-bombing planes out of Quebec, as well as Coulson Aviation’s helicopters that the company says are “on the front line” of the fight.

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Coulson says in a social media post that its crews are “braving high winds and challenging conditions” in the fight against the Palisades fire.

Thousands of firefighters are tackling multiple blazes that have killed at least two people and destroyed more than 10,000 structures across the Los Angeles area as of Wednesday morning, according to Los Angeles County’s fire chief.

Coulson, which is based in Port Alberni, B.C., but also operates in the United States and Australia, says its aircraft in the fight include its double-rotor Chinook fleet and a smaller Sikorsky S-76 helicopter.

Read the full story here.

— The Canadian Press

‘Fingers crossed’: B.C.’s Coulson Aviation describes dangerous battle against Los Angeles wildfires

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Crews flying helicopters owned by Port Alberni-based Coulson Aviation that are fighting wildfires around Los Angeles caught a break Friday as winds fanning the flames have died down.

“The weekend looks good,” said company CEO Wayne Coulson. “I think we’ve got a 36- to 48-hour reprieve to get the house in order, for our part anyways.”

Coulson operates three twin-rotor Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter tankers on contract with the utility firm Southern California Edison to act as a 24-hour quick-reaction fire response across three counties. Friday’s weather was an improvement since Tuesday when the howling Santa Ana winds kept them grounded.

“The ground (firefighters) need us because they need us to knock down the head (of the fire) so they can get in there and do the hard work they need to do,” Coulson said. “Without air support, everybody’s at risk.”

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And with the break, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that while “these fires are not out, we’re going to make a lot of progress.”

Read the full story here.

— Derrick Penner

‘Hell on earth’: Ottawa rapper TwoTiime among Canadians displaced by L.A. fires

Ottawa rapper Khalid Omar, who performs under the name TwoTiime, was forced to evacuate his Calabasas condo as wildfires tore through the Los Angeles area this week, leaving the studio where he records in ruins.

The 23-year-old says he woke up Thursday to a nightmarish scene as the Kenneth fire began spreading through the West Hills, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds.

“It was looking like hell on earth, I’m not gonna lie to you,” he said Friday in a phone call. “There was smoke all up in the air. The sky was red and brown. I thought it was judgment day.”

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After an evacuation warning was issued, Omar says he fled his home and the thick smoke blanketing the area. He’s currently living in an Airbnb in downtown L.A.

Read the full story here.

— The Canadian Press

Tuck in for a dry and warm January in B.C., say weather forecasters

Vancouver’s warm winter weather is expected to spread throughout the province and continue at least through January.

“In the middle of January, we expect pretty warm and dry conditions over most of the province,” said Chris Doyle, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

December on B.C.’s South Coast was warmer than average, Doyle said.

He said the La Niña weather event that was forecast has been slow to materialize and is expected to be much weaker than originally forecast.

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“It will be very weak. So we are not likely to see those more profound winter effects that we had earlier anticipated,” Doyle said.

La Niña is a global weather phenomenon typically known for producing colder, snowier winters. It appears roughly every three to five years and typically lasts one to two years.

As winters become warmer due to climate change, La Niñas are expected to be weaker and less pronounced, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Read the full story here.

— Nathan Griffiths

B.C. has five years left to meet its 30×30 conservation target. Can it be done?

The Kaska Dena people, who for thousands of years have lived on a vast swath of intact wilderness in northern B.C. on the Yukon border, have a saying in their language: Dene K’éh Kusān.

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It means always will be there.

But as more land is swallowed up by industry — logging, mining, gas exploration — concerns are mounting about whether this land will always be there for future generations. They want to ensure it remains undeveloped to preserve their way of life, and doesn’t succumb to biodiversity loss and climate change like other areas of B.C.

So the Kaska have come up with a plan for the province to protect an area, called the Dene K’éh Kusān — 40,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Vancouver Island, of land and water. They say this can be done by avoiding or minimizing overlap with existing mining and oil-and-gas extraction sites.

If designated an Indigenous protected and conserved area, old-growth boreal forests would remain undeveloped, under the management of Indigenous land stewards, while lakes, rivers and wetlands would be off-limits to industry. It would mean protection for at-risk species such as caribou and moose.

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“It’s for the children coming after us,” says Testloa Smith, a Kaska land steward, in a documentary about the protected status. “And for them you take good care of it.”

It would also boost B.C.’s pledge to protect 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of water by 2030, say conservation experts. B.C. set the target in 2022, following Ottawa’s commitment at the COP15 conference in Montreal to reversing the decline in biodiversity to better fight climate change and maintain food systems.

Read the full story here.

— Tiffany Crawford

L.A. wildfires a ‘haunting’ reminder of B.C. blaze: West Kelowna fire chief

The fire chief of a B.C. community devastated by a fast-moving wildfire in 2023 says it’s “haunting” to see similar circumstances playing out in Southern California.

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Jason Brolund, the fire chief in West Kelowna, B.C., says the images from the Los Angeles area — where flames have torn through thousands of homes over the past week — are so familiar and vivid that some of his firefighters won’t look at them.

West Kelowna bore the brunt of the McDougall Creek fire in August 2023, when it descended on neighbourhoods surrounding Okanagan Lake and destroyed or damaged almost 200 properties.

In Southern California, flames fanned by high winds have devastated communities including Pacific Palisades and Pasadena, spreading in a manner similar to what West Kelowna encountered in 2023.

Brolund says the fires are an important reminder that communities must be proactive about the risks of large wildfires near urban areas as climate change triggers more blazes.

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Read the full story here.

— The Canadian Press

With 2024’s record-breaking heat, climate change is speeding up

Scientists sounded the alarm long before last year ended that 2024 would become the hottest year on record and almost certainly the first to surpass the 1.5 C limit to global warming, set out as a goal in the Paris Agreement.

Now both of those milestones were confirmed on Thursday and Friday in official statistical releases from scientific agencies, including the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Met Office.

What’s puzzled scientists is the clear acceleration in rising temperatures, even as the evidence of the fast-warming atmosphere became impossible to miss.

The hottest day ever recorded happened on July 21, 2024 — a record that held until July 22. The planetary heat spike was made 2.5 times more likely by greenhouse gases, according to researchers.

Typhoon Gaemi in Asia and Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the US, similarly juiced by climate change, killed hundreds of people and caused colossal damage. There was flooding across Africa’s Sahel and in southeastern Spain; drought in southern Italy and the Amazon River basin; wildfires in central Chile; and landslides in northern India.

Hottest-year status, awaiting confirmation, would put 2024 in rarefied company. The warmest year up to now, by a substantial margin? 2023.

Read the full story here.

— Bloomberg

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