NASA predicts more extreme weather events but ‘we can stop making it worse’

NASA experts predict that more extreme heat waves, intense rainfall, and coastal floodings will continue to happen in Canada and the rest of the world.

Since record-keeping began in 1880, 2021 recorded the sixth-highest global surface temperature — a trend that experts say will continue and bring forth extreme weather events impacting infrastructure and agriculture in the future.

In a virtual briefing Thursday, climate researchers from NASA said that over the past five years, there has been “no shortage of extremes” and they predict that more extreme heatwaves, intense rainfall, and more coastal floodings will continue.

According to NASA’s annual Global Climate Report published Thursday, Canada and the rest of North America had their seventh warmest year on record in 2021 with a temperature that was 1.40 C (2.52 F) above average.

In an interview with Global News’ Jackson Proskow, Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said that the world has reached a plateau of warming that’s actually part of an ongoing continued warming. This is because of the increases in greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane, he said.

“We’re seeing global warming…having impacts directly on weather extremes (as shown by) the heat waves in Western Canada last summer, changes in coastal flooding, and changes in intense precipitation,” said Schmidt.

“All of these things are now being more and more strongly tied to the fact that we have warmed the planet by more than a degree Celsius over the last 100 years,” he added.

Overall, the February 2021 temperature departure for North America was -1.34 C (-2.41 F) — North America’s coldest February since 1994, according to the NASA report on how a warmer climate has impacted the weather.

According to the Government of Canada, the Prairies had maximum temperatures that were as high as -34.0 C (-29.2 F) and nighttime wind chills between -45 C to -55 C (-49 F to -67.0 F), setting many new record temperatures going back 50 years.