The Local News Data Hub’s goal with this project was to produce a series of stories on how climate change will alter winter cold and summer heat in Canadian communities in the coming decades. The results of the analysis for 30 Canadian cities are available by clicking on the map’s markers.
The stories paint a picture of winters with fewer cold days, when temperatures fall below freezing, and summers with more hot days, when temperatures soar above 30 C. The Data Hub’s analysis for the stories compared climate change data for the period 1951-80 with data for the period 2051-80.
The climate change projections for each city are based on projections available from the ClimateData.ca portal, a collaborative national data initiative funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada. They are the output of 24 different climate models and are based on 30-year averages to ensure that what is being described reflects the overall climate and not the more variable experience of weather. For the 2051-80 period, the ranges seen on the map represent the low-end (10th percentile) and high-end (90th percentile) of the averaged model projections. For the 1951-80 period, the values on the map represent the median (50th percentile) annual average over the period because it reflects the conditions during that period.
Clicking on the marker for a city will take you to a summary of the projections for these five variables:
- The number of frost days per year on average when the temperature fell/will fall below 0 C
- The number of days per year on average when the temperature fell/will fall below-15 C
- The number of days per year on average when the temperature fell/will fall below -25 C
- The number of days per year on average when the temperature surpassed/will surpass 30 C
- The average precipitation (measured in millimetres) on the wettest day of the year
Read stories in the series here.
Read more about the methodology for Warmer Winters, Hotter Summers: Climate projections for Canadian cities here.
View/download the data here.
