WhatFinger


The more we look into the climate record, the less support there is for the alarmists' case.

Still No Evidence for Climate Change Induced Flooding in Southeast Saskatchewan During 2014



On the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was a very useful two-part episode entitled "Chain of Command." In it, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians. The Cardassian captor shows Picard four lights, and demands that Picard tell him there are five lights. A YouTube video has nicely mixed some relevant scenes from the episode to dance music.
This show provides an apt metaphor for the public conversation on climate change. Despite how little evidence there is to relate specific weather events to anthropogenic climate change, we keep hearing demands that we must see the historical record within this alarmist perspective. A few days ago I published an article showing there is clearly no evidence the recent 2014 flooding in southeast Saskatchewan was due to climate change. Like clockwork, a couple days later the local Regina Leader-Post newspaper published three separate articles all claiming that climate change is -- in fact -- behind these floods. Because no matter what the actual climate data says, we must say there are five lights (aka, climate change is the cause of our flooding problems). In Murray Mandryk's column, John Pomeroy -- the Canada Research Chair for Water Resources and Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan -- is quoted with the following:

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"Things are happening and they are happening much faster than anyone imagined."
Really? So even though there is a complete absence of any significant trends since 1990 in mean, mean maximum, or mean minimum temperatures for the month of June at any of the seven long-term Environment Canada Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data stations (Cote, Estevan, Indian Head, Kelliher, Regina, Yellow Grass, and Yorkton) in and around the flood-affected area of southeastern Saskatchewan -- nor have there been any trends in June precipitation at these sites during the past quarter-century -- we should somehow believe that "things are happening and they are happening much faster than anyone imagined"? Certainly doesn't appear that way, especially when there are also no trends in 1-, 2-, and 3-day maximum rainfall totals during the month of June dating all the way back to the 1800s at Regina. Actually, trends appear to be towards less extreme events, not more. The recent rains at Estevan -- in the southeast corner of the province -- were not even particularly unusual within the climate record of the past quarter-century, never-mind over the entire historical dataset. In general, my previous analyses have looked for Saskatchewan's supposedly changing climate over the past few decades, and not found it. These results contradict what is now being claimed in Saskatchewan mainstream media outlets, such as this:
"While one-day rain storms have not increased in the last century, what have increased dramatically throughout the Prairies, studies show, are three-day rain events."
My previous article showed the historical record for 1-, 2-, and 3-day rainfall maxima during June at Regina. Let us now expand that to include the historical record for these events across the Canadian Prairies, using stations at Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Estevan, and Brandon. There are no significant trends at any of these stations for any of these events. None. Not one. And such correlation would be a pre-requisite to any climate change causation. In short, I find no evidence that 3-day rainfall intensities are increasing throughout the Canadian Prairies. How can the late June 2014 floods in southeast Saskatchewan be unequivocally linked to climate change when there are no significant historical trends since the 1800s in the severity of 3-day rainfall events during June, nor any trends over the past few decades in total precipitation for this month? And take this quote:
"He says heavy winter snow had saturated the soil, which was made even wetter by unusually heavy spring rains. Then the frontal system came up from U.S., stalled over southeast Saskatchewan in late June [2014], 'and pushed it over the top,' says Pomeroy. The system dropped more than 150 millimetres of rain in a few days -- almost as much rain as normally falls in dry southeast Saskatchewan all year."
The 1981-2010 climate normals for southeast Saskatchewan reveal the following amount of normal annual rainfall throughout the region: Estevan, 332 mm; Weyburn, 318 mm; Regina, 309 mm; Yorkton, 350 mm; Carnduff, 376 mm; Indian Head, 322 mm; Macoun, 350 mm; Redvers, 331 mm; and Yellow Grass, 319 mm. Thus, normal annual rainfall throughout southeast Saskatchewan averages about 335 mm. Somehow 150 mm is almost all of this? Nope, it is less than half. Overall, if there is a smoking gun in the data proving the 2014 Saskatchewan floods are due to climate change, I cannot find it. If those concerned about anthropogenic climate change have such proof, they should publish it -- because to date, they have not released this proof for public scrutiny.


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Sierra Rayne -- Bio and Archives

Sierra Rayne holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and writes regularly on environment, energy, and national security topics. He can be found on Twitter at @srayne_ca


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