Understanding the Impact of Climate change on a Series of Climate indices Related to Food Security, Infrastructure Resilience, and Human Health in Canada Using the State-of-the-Art CMIP6 Simulations

Les conditions climatiques jouent un rôle important pour les communautés, l'économie et l'environnement d'un pays. Les effets des changements climatiques, causés par l'activité humaine, sont déjà fortement ressentis au Canada altérant les normales climatiques du pays. En effet, la température annuelle moyenne du pays a augmenté de 1.7℃ en soixante ans ce qui est le double de l'accroissement moyen planétaire. Cette augmentation de température est encore plus évidente dans le nord du pays. Le Canada fait aussi face à une accélération de la fréquence et un accroissement de l'intensité des évènements extrêmes tels que les inondations et les vagues de chaleurs. Au même moment que le pays se réchauffe, le Canada devient davantage vulnérable aux changements de températures et précipitations. En particulier, l'agriculture, la résilience des infrastructures ainsi que la santé humaine et environnementale sont à très forts risques de dégradation.

Abstract

Climatic conditions play an important role in shaping countries' society, economy, and environment. Canada has already been affected by the human-induced changes in climate, therefore altering normal climatic conditions in the country. Canada's annual average temperature has increased by 1.7℃ in sixty years, which is double the world average increase. This rise of temperature is even more evident in the Canadian North. The country is also facing more frequent and intense extreme events. As Canada gets warmer, the country becomes vulnerable to changes in temperature and precipitation. Particularly, agricultural production, infrastructure stability, and human and environmental health are at great risks of degradation. Climate models are the most credible tools to project future climate; therefore, their behaviour is critical to quantify climate change impacts. The advancements in computation allowed these models to continuously get updated with a greater goal of better representing physical processes and increasing models' spatial resolution. The simulations of the state-of-the-art Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) have become recently available to the public. Due to important updates in these new models in comparison to their precedent CMIP5 ones, especially in terms of future scenarios, it is crucial to first analyze the behaviour of CMIP6 models over Canada in representing pertinent climate indices during the historical and future period. Second, due to the importance of potential evapotranspiration (PET) for hydrological and agricultural production modelling, it is essential to have a better understanding of changes in PET across Canadian regions in the future using the CMIP6 models. Such analyses considering a large set of CMIP6 simulations are not yet provided in the literature for Canadian regions.