Climate Change In Vancouver Essay

Climate and weather are similar, describing how the atmosphere behaves, the difference being the timescale (Conway, 2010). Weather is a short-term scale of temperature and precipitation, usually considering weeks or less (ibid). Climate, however, is a long term description of months or longer, describing different seasons and trends of temperature and precipitation. Climate of Vancouver is typically mild during the spring and summer and damp during the autumn and winter, and unlike other mountainous areas of British Columbia, it is not excessively cold or snowy (“Hello BC”, n.d.).

Climate change describes the changes that are happening to the planet in different countries or regions (NASA, n.d.). Climate change is caused by global warming,

This gives Vancouver the highest population in British Columbia and the third highest in the Nation (ibid).

Currently, over half of the world’s population lives in urban based areas (Owrangi et al, 2014), and this increase in population is expected to contribute to further increases in flood risks (ibid). Vancouver has achieved rapid socioeconomic development due to the increased employment opportunities and growth rates, directly stressing local natural resources by increasing population and urbanization (Owrangi et al, 2014).

Out of the largest 136 coastal cities in the world, Vancouver ranked 11 in terms of future flood damage (ibid) creating concerns for the safety of the human population. The historic sea level rise in Vancouver is 2.0cm/50 years but has jumped to an expected one meter by the year 2100 (“Sea Level Adaptation”, 2013). Majority of Canadians will be living within 20km of the coast with approximately 80% of British Columbians living within 5km (ibid). It is projected that the number of people living near coastlines will increase while will raise the amount of the population vulnerable to climate change trends