Canada’s Vulnerability to Climate Change: Selected Weather-Related Events and Disasters and their Consequences, Canada, 1997 to 2013
![](https://cichprofile.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/6.4.3_final_revised_vulnerability.png)
Source: CICH graphic created using data adapted from: Lemmen, D.S., Warren, F.J., Lacroix, J., and Bush, E., editors (2008): From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007: Government of Canada, Ottawa, ON, 448 p. https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/earthsciences/pdf/assess/2007/pdf/full-complet_e.pdf – accessed March 8h, 2017.
Canada has seen the impact of climate change more than other countries. From 1948 to 2012, the annual average surface air temperature in Canada increased by approximately 1.7°C, roughly twice the global increase.1
This is largely due to the significant increase in temperature in Canada’s North, which has been roughly 2.5 times greater than the global average temperature increase since the late 1940s.1,2
Climate change has contributed to the increased frequency, duration and intensity of climate and weather-related events and disasters in Canada.1
Recent wildfires, ice storms, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters have cost Canadians billions of dollars and too many lives.3 The table shows a portion of these extreme weather related events and disasters that happened between 1997 and 2013 in Canada and some of their consequences.
1Government of Canada. Canada’s Sixth National Report on Climate Change (2014). http://www.ec.gc.ca/cc/0BA54AAB-6E8E-4D48-B42C-DCBB09B27D10/6458_EC_ID1180-MainBook_high_min%20FINAL-s.pdf-accessed July 24, 2017.
2IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Pachauri, R.K. and A. Reisinger (eds.)]. Geneva, Switzerland. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_full_report.pdf-accessed July 24, 2017.
3Lemmen, D.S., Warren, F.J., Lacroix, J., and Bush, E., editors (2008): From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007: Government of Canada, Ottawa, ON, 448 p. https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/earthsciences/pdf/assess/2007/pdf/full-complet_e.pdf-accessed July 24, 2017.
Implications
As children are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than adults, they are likely to make up a large portion of those evacuated, injured, and deceased people as a result of climate change related events and disasters.