As they are hot topics, let’s take heat waves and floods as examples to better expose the seriousness of the repercussions.
According to Dr. Pierre Gosselin, Health Program Coordinator at Ouranos (a consortium on regional climatology and adaptation to climate change) climate change will upset the climate of Québec, which means that for an urban centre like Montréal, the number of heat-wave days could triple over the next 30 years (Pilon-Larose, 2018). Meteorological data tend to confirm this trend. The increase in air temperature is already occurring (Natural Resources Canada, 2016). Nevertheless, due to the natural variability of the climate, heat waves may not occur every year or may not have the same intensity. For example, Québec authorities have identified more than 90 deaths potentially attributable to the heat wave from June to July 2018. The last similar episode occurred in the summer of 2010 with more than 106 deaths (Bélice, 2018).
Floods are the most common natural disaster in Canada (Public Safety Canada, 2018). Although their causes are many and varied, scientific reports show that the likelihood of their consequences is also on the rise. The significant increase in rainfall in most of Canada is already being observed today (Natural Resources Canada, 2016). As an overview, the floods that occurred in Québec in the spring of 2017 affected 291 municipalities across 15 administrative regions (Ministère de la Sécurité publique [MSP], 2017).
In most cases, the negative effects of these phenomena can be significant for the health and comfort of the population.