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“If we continue to mischaracterize (extremes), and if we continue to manage the forest and disturbance levels as if we were doing fine, we’re going to take the system further and further out of anything that is protective,” stated Dr. Younes Alila. And as climate extremes become more frequent and severe, he says, assessing the risks incorrectly could lead to greater damages and losses of life. He says frequency is the “lost dimension” in B.C. forest hydrology. It’s crucial to consider frequency because dikes and bridges can fail when battered by peak flows that are happening more often.

“Mother Nature has an amazing sense of timing. On the 20th anniversary of the evacuation of 27,000 people from Kelowna due to forest fires, history repeated itself in August in the Kelowna region, in particular West Kelowna. We have had two decades to prepare for the obvious and the inevitable. Some of us have spent our careers working on solutions to watershed, water and food security issues and challenges. Climate change is accelerating. There is no time to re-invent the wheel, fiddle, or go down cul-de-sacs. Understand how the past informs the future and build on that experience,” stated Kim Stephens.

The United States is expected to experience as much sea level rise by the year 2050 as it witnessed in the previous hundred years. The Sea Level Rise Technical Report provides the most up-to-date sea level rise projections for all U.S. states and territories by decade for the next 100 years and beyond, based on a combination of tide gauge and satellite observations and all the model ensembles from the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“For many, these recent wild water lurches seemed to come out of nowhere. And that is the issue: It really isn’t unexpected. It may just be happening faster than many of us imagined. But a bleak future of worsening impacts is not inevitable. We can still choose a different path forward. The B.C. government has an opportunity to lead the world in taking watershed security seriously and building a plan to help us get to a prosperous tomorrow, while starting the work today. This is the best hedge against an increasingly uncertain future,” stated Oliver Brandes.

Tamsin Lyle wrote a report for the provincial government in May 2021. In it, she stated that “the current model for flood risk governance in B.C. is broken.” Lyle said she was asked by senior bureaucrats to “tone down the language.” But she declined. “One of my proudest moments is that I kept that line in,” she said. “I think the province from about 20 years ago has a lot to answer for in terms of downloading the responsibility from the province – who had the better capacity to look at the problem at scale – to local governments who don’t have the capacity and don’t have the expertise.”

“Thwaites glacier, the widest in the world at 80 miles wide, is held back by a floating platform of ice called an ice shelf, which makes it flow less quickly. But scientists have just confirmed that this ice shelf is becoming rapidly destabilised. The eastern ice shelf now has cracks criss-crossing its surface, and could collapse within ten years. If Thwaites’ ice shelf did collapse, it would spell the beginning of the end for the glacier. Without its ice shelf, Thwaites glacier would discharge all its ice into the ocean over the following decades to centuries.” stated Dr. Ella Gilbert.

“Recent flooding in southwest B.C. (in mid-November 2021) was connected to the cumulative amount of rain falling in a short period of time. It was also linked to several record-breaking wildfire seasons which reduced tree cover on mountainsides and the vegetation that would normally have helped to absorb and slow water running into streams and rivers. The interconnectedness this year also included the almost unfathomable summer heat dome which set off a chain reaction — early drought, drier forests, and wildfires starting four to five weeks earlier than usual,” explained Armel Castellan.

“A new study provides a glimpse into the future of Western U.S. snow and the picture is far from rosy. Due to rising temperatures, the region has already lost 20 percent of its snowpack since the 1950s. That’s enough water to fill Lake Mead, the nation’s largest human-made reservoir. It stands to lose another half, and possibly more, later this century, from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada and into the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest, according to a literature synthesis conducted in the study leveraging dozens of peer-reviewed climate model projections,” stated Diana Leonard.

“In the last few years I have also worked on the environmental benefits of trees in urban areas, and their role in climate-proofing our cities. We have been investigating how the cooling, shading and flood-prevention benefits they provide are affected by the species of tree and the growing conditions. All this will help us appreciate the importance of man’s long relationship with trees and with the wood they produce,” stated Roland Ennos. “To determine whether the humble tree really can provide such robust defences, we first need to understand the role they play in soaking up excess rain water,”

“Singapore is one of most densely populated countries in the world. It faces the twin challenges of ensuring sustainable water supply during droughts as well as effective drainage during intense rain seasons amid climate change. For over two decades, Singapore’s National Water Agency, PUB, has successfully added large-scale nationwide rainwater harvesting, used water collection, treatment and reuse, and seawater desalination to its portfolio of conventional water sources, so the nation-state can achieve long-term water sustainability,” stated Peter Joo Hee Ng.