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,

the long-term, average rise in surface temperature of the planet (ibid). Both are caused and exacerbated primarily from human influences and urbanization, such as energy and food use (Owrangi et al, 2014).

Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, have released heating trap gases into the atmosphere which have caused the Earth’s surface temperature to rise (Bindoff et al, 2007). Furthermore, the oceans absorb 90% of the heat (ibid) causing loss of land ice from mountain glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and thus, causing global mean sea level to rise (Perrette et al, 2013).

Vancouver Trends

The population of Vancouver is 2,313,328 with an average growth rate of 9.3% (StatCan, 2011).

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

(ibid).

Approach
This report was created by the use of an interdisciplinary team of three to set out and research the effects of climate change and sea level rise on a Canadian coastal City. Vancouver, British Columbia, was chosen for this report as it is expected to see high levels of sea level rise. Journal articles were the primary source of research, but media articles and government webpages were also used to analyze the impacts and projected outcomes. The analysis was done by first understanding the current place that Vancouver is in and then understanding the future expectations. Causes and implications of sociological and socioeconomic impacts were both analyzed as well as the impacts on human health. Recommendations and implementation ideas for resolution and prevention were also researched to find the best course of action.