It’s no surprise, after California’s five-year drought that is now creeping northwards, experts have water on the mind.

The drought-plagued forests that burned across the continent this summer offered a glimpse of our future world, according to retired scientists David Schindler, who told an audience last week that the ash-laden air and sepia skies of summer 2015 are to become the new normal in a hotter and drier world.

Schindler, a Rhodes Scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences, spoke at The Walrus Talks in Victoria, an event that brought together authors and experts all with stories to tell about our most overlooked resource: water.

“When I agreed to give a Walrus Talk last spring on the topic of climate warming and fresh water I couldn’t have known that the summer of 2015 was going to be a poster child that would display most of these symptoms that I’ve been studying for 25 years or more,” he said.

“In this part of B.C. you enjoyed the summer of water rationing and red suns set in a grey sky with air quality that you normally wouldn’t see outside of Beijing. You’re getting a good idea of quality of life that we’re facing ahead if we continue to operate as business as usual.”

Schindler said Canadians have been “lulled into thinking that Canada has so much freshwater, we can always squander it and be sure there will always be some more waiting for us.”

“We’re assured by politicians and media that we have lots of water.”

The website for Natural Resources Canada demonstrates this point exactly: “Overall, Canada may be considered a freshwater-rich country: on an average annual basis, Canadian rivers discharge close to nine per cent of the world’s renewable water supply, while Canada has less than one per cent of the world’s population.”

But this way of thinking about Canada’s freshwater is misleading, Schindler said, because what sustains that water supply is runoff. With climate change already affecting Canada’s glaciers and increasing incidents of drought, our freshwater supply is in danger.

“You can’t talk about water without talking about climate change,” Schindler said. “We know that the snow packs in these mountain ranges are dwindling as last winter gave us a good example of. The glaciers supply a tiny amount of the total annual flow of a river but it comes at a critical time of the hot, dry summer.”

Schindler said the Bow River Glacier can supply up to 50 per cent of the river’s water during dry spells. But he said, over the last century, the Bow River Glacier has dramatically retreated threatening water supply for cities like Calgary as well as the cold water necessary to sustain the river’s famous cold water fish species during the hotter months of July to September.

Wildfires, Both Cause and Outcome of Climate Change, Consume Freshwater

The millions of hectares of forest that burned across Canada this year were the victim of the “deadly combination” of pine-beetle infestations, drought and high temperatures, Schindler said.

He added that wildfires further exacerbating the problem of climate change by releasing huge amounts of emissions.

Although models for determining how much forest fires contribute to overall emissions are still being developed, Environment Canada estimates an average acre of burnt forests releases 4.81 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

But this figure can be higher for peatland, common in the boreal forest, which is estimated to hold 30 per cent of the world’s terrestrial carbon. According to new research it turns out boreal forests are burning at greater rates than at any time in the past 10,000 years.

According to Environment Canada, it’s estimated that in an average year, fires across Canada release 27 megatonnes of carbon. For reference, in 2012 Canada released 699 megatonnes and is on track to release 727 megatonnes of carbon emissions annually by 2020.

But in a bad year, those emissions can skyrocket. According to Schindler wildfire emissions in one of these hot and dry spells can approach the emissions output of Canada’s industrial sector, the country’s number one emitter of greenhouse gasses.

And because saltwater can corrode fire fighting equipment, a freshwater is required to fight all these fires and is at times mixed with chemical fire retardants or foam concentrates. A spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection recently told NPR that firefighters facing severe drought conditions this past summer were forced to draw water from nearby swimming pools.

No government websites list the total amount of water used to fight Canada’s forest fires, although a single fire near Banff, Alberta this summer consumed an estimated ten thousand litres of water per day from nearby rivers and creeks.

Federal Politicans Must Consider Costs

It's easy to see the high costs of climate change and the high value of water, Schindler said. The amount of money put into fighting forests fires plus the value of lost forestry quickly escalated into the billions this summer. B.C. alone spent nearly $300 million fighting forest fires in 2015 although the province only budgeted $63 million for the task.

Schindler said it's time to be more honest about these costs.

“How is it that we can have three leaders debating economics in the run up to the election — talking about figures of the same magnitude — without talking about this side of the ledger?"

“They talk about jobs, they talk about big industry — how about the costs? Don’t you guys know that there are two sides to the ledger?”

Schindler ended by saying the value of water and the cost of a warming climate can’t be kept separate from any grand promises about the economy.

“Before we can have an economic action plan we need to have a climate action plan,” he said.

Image: University of Alberta

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This blog originally appeared on Carbon Brief.

The Canadian Rockies, which sit as a backdrop to many a stunning vista, could be almost entirely devoid of glaciers by the end of the century, a new study suggests.

Researchers modelled the impact of rising temperatures on glaciers across western Canada.

The results show widespread ice loss by 2050, and ice all but vanishing a few decades later.

Around 27,000 square kilometers of Western Canada is covered by glaciers, an area similar in size to the amount of ice in the Himalayas or the whole of South America.

For the new study, published in Nature Geoscience, the researchers developed a model to see how rising temperatures will affect the volume and area of glaciers in three regions in western Canada. These regions are shown in the map below: the coast (green sections), the interior (pink) and the Rockies (blue).

Map of study area in western Canada, including three subregions of the Coast (green), Interior (pink) and Rockies (blue). Present-day (2005) glacier extent is shown in white. Source: Clarke et al (2015)

The researchers looked at how temperature evolved under four different scenarios for future greenhouse gas emissions. Their model then calculated the amount of ice loss for glaciers in each region for each scenario.

You can see in the graphs below the striking losses of ice the model calculates. Even under the most stringent emissions cuts (RCP2.6, shown by the blue lines), glaciers in the Interior (bottom left graph) and Rockies (top right) regions are projected to lose around 70 per cent of their ice compared to 2005. Under higher emissions, they would lose 95 per cent of their ice.

Up until the middle of the century, the fate of most glaciers is similar for all four scenarios, the researchers say. But by 2100, there is a clearer separation between the amount of ice loss for each one.

Project percentage changes for ice volume of glaciers in each region: Coast (top left), Interior (bottom left), Rockies (top right) and All (bottom right). For four emissions scenarios, from lowest (RCP2.6, blue) to highest (RCP8.5, red). NARR (black) shows observed changes. Source: Clarke et al (2015)

Precipitation Likely to Fall as Rain, Not Snow

The projected decline in ice volume is mainly caused by rising temperatures, Prof Garry Clarke, lead author and professor of glaciology at University of British Columbia, tells Carbon Brief: "This has two different effects, neither of which is helpful to glaciers: One is more summer melting, and, two, is less winter snowfall."

Precipitation could actually increase under climate change, says Clarke, but rising winter temperatures mean it is more likely to fall as rain than as snow. And this is of no benefit to glaciers.

Ice loss is least drastic in the coastal region as it tends to receive more snow during winter, and cooler temperatures mean it loses less ice in summer, Clarke says. The glaciers in the very northwest are the most resilient to warming because they are at a higher elevation and get more snow than the other areas.

'Cutting-Edge' Research

The researchers' methods are at the cutting-edge for studying the fate of glaciers across large regions, says Dr Tobias Bolch, a senior glacier researcher at the University of Zurich, who wasn't involved in the study.

Glacier models tend to consider either an individual glacier in detail, or ice changes across a region more broadly, says Clarke. Theirs is the first to model both, analyzing many glaciers in detail at the same time.

Glacier model images of projections of ice extent for the Columbia Icefield during the 21st century, under a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5). Credit: Garry Clarke.

Dr Alex Gardner, a solid earth research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, tells Carbon Brief that the study manages to model the flow of ice in the glaciers: "Since mountain glaciers, by definition, are located in areas of complex topography, modeling this redistribution of ice has proven challenging at large scales. Garry Clarke and his colleagues make a considerable contribution to the field of glaciology by developing and employing a mathematical framework to do just this."

The authors have also made all the projections available online, so that other scientists can build on their work.

'Future is Dim'

The loss of these glaciers would contribute around 6mm to global sea levels. This is relatively modest, says Clarke, but there are other impacts that he thinks could be more of a concern.

For example, the glacier meltwater feeds alpine streams, keeping the region cool during hot, dry summer months. Losing this natural thermostat would affect freshwater ecosystems, he says.

But Clarke thinks the major loss will be the visual changes to the landscape as mountains lose their glacier cover. The glaciers provide a key tourist attraction. The Athabasca Glacier in the Rockies, for example, is the most-visited glacier in North America. Millions of people each year visit to clamber over the huge mass of ice, yet it is retreating and thinning already, says Clarke.

"Athabasca Glacier is doing badly at present and will fare worse as climate warming continues," Clarke says.

Canada's Glacier National Park, which sits in the 'interior' region of the study, will experience near-total loss of its glaciers by 2100, says Clarke.

The glaciers also give Canada's iconic mountain lakes their distinctive colour. Fine sediments, known as rock flour, are eroded by glaciers and then washed downstream by meltwater.

Banff National Park, for example, attracts 3 to 4 million tourists every year, many of whom come to see its brilliant emerald lakes, such as Lake Louise. However, as the glaciers disappear, these lakes will look very different by the end of the century, Clarke warns:

"The future of this kind of tourism is dim."

Lake Louise's brilliant emerald colour comes from glacier melt. Source: Karl Johnson via Flickr

So, is there any good news from this study? Clarke thinks the glaciers and lakes could still have a future if we act quickly to cut emissions. He says: "If we had the global will to hold to the mildest likely scenario for greenhouse gas increases, mountain glaciers would not entirely disappear from our study area."

Clarke, G.K.C. et al. (2015) Projected deglaciation of western Canada in the twenty-first century, Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/ngeo2407

Main Image: Snow dome from Athabasca Glacier by Jeroen van Luin via Flickr

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