Climate change is real and it is local.
Prince George data shows the region is affected by similar conditions seen globally.
"Prince George has observed rising air temperatures over the last century," confirmed UNBC professor Stephen Dery, an expert in climate change and the Canada Research Chair in northern hydrometeorology.
"The rate of warming was 1.3C per century between 1918 and 2006, while the rate of warming increased to 4.6C per century between 1971 and 2006," Dery said. "Total annual precipitation, snowfall and rainfall increased by nine per cent, nine per cent, and 17 per cent respectively, between 1918 and 2006. In recent decades, however, there has been a declining trend in snowfall but an increasing trend in total precipitation, thus a transition in the phase - solid to liquid - of the precipitation. These changes impact snow accumulation processes, with a tendency toward less snow in the valleys, but perhaps greater amounts in the high mountains."
A highly visible impact has been the prolonged periods of flood danger, especially along main waterways like the Fraser River. This year is a textbook example, with record-setting snow accumulations in the Central Interior and on into the northern reaches of the province, but not in Prince George.
Compounding the high river levels is the water not being absorbed by millions of pine trees as it once was. The pine beetle proliferation was itself a direct consequence of climate change, as the bug's population was typically kept in check by the deep freeze winters used to provide.
"The pine tree kill-off can have a number of impacts," said David Maloney, a forest water management officer for the Ministry of Forests, Land and Natural Resource Operations. "It allows for more spring runoff, certainly. It also has the potential for increased snow accumulation because a live tree will intercept some snows and sublimate it back into the atmosphere, so that snow makes it to the ground and is available to run into stream networks and down into rivers," Maloney said.
Business is already being affected within the forestry sector. As an example, helicopter operators in northern B.C. used to write with ink when scheduling "forest fire fighting" in their summer agendas. These days they dare only use pencil.
"A lot of what we do has to do with the climate, and the climate is changing, our environment is changing," said Tam Jansen of Aberdeen Helicopters. "From a strictly scientific sense we are having to reinvent ourselves, diversify our skills, because traditionally forest fires have been a big part of our business - and most helicopter companies in northern B.C. would be like that - but that can't be counted on anymore. We aren't getting the long seasons with a regular string of fires from beginning to end. Now the fires are more sporadic. Last year we had none. Not one. But when we do have them they are big, intense, catastrophic events. So for any one company, it is silly to rely on that for a revenue stream."
One of the ways Aberdeen Helicopters has made up for the lost forest fire revenue is, ironically, climate change itself. They have been chartered frequently to fly researchers and government staff into remote areas where studies are ongoing.
Dery said the whole gamut of the region's business and social life will, directly or indirectly, be touched by climate change.
The more the region warms, he added, the warmer the Nechako and Fraser rivers will be, which is a known and serious threat to the entire provincial salmon industry, and all the ecosystems that connect to the provincial fish. Part of the interest in building a multi-million-dollar water release facility at Kenney Dam has to do with adding enough water to the Nechako River to properly readjust the salmon's and sturgeon's aquatic thermostat.
"Other animal species may be affected by variant snowpack levels including mountain caribou that depend on high snowpacks to reach lichen on old-growth trees," said Dery.
On the other hand, ski resorts may have improved conditions at least some years, and the overall agriculture industry may be helped by adding to the list of plants and animals that will potentially thrive in the warmed local habitat. On the other hand, the same door is open for invasive species and diseases.
Two topics that never seem to escape the Prince George water cooler are water quality and potholes. Those, too, are affected by climate change, Dery said.
"Frequent transitions between above and below freezing conditions lead to numerous potholes in our streets," he explained.
The dead pines and resulting runoff consequences also affect water quality partially because of the effects of erosion.
"In your area, it is snow melt dominant," said Maloney. "You'll get some erosion naturally anyway. Once you increase peak flows in a natural system, there is potential for increased erosion, but we are trying to separate out what would have occurred anyway. It has not been quantified to know if we are getting 15 trees floating down a river compared to 10 prior to the pine beetle."
Biologist Craig DeLong is trying to get a tighter grip on the climate change handle, especially as pertains to the forest industry. The scientist has spent years, including time in Prince George as an adjunct professor at UNBC, studying forest health. The Ministry of Forests, Land and Natural Resource Operations features some of that research in its database and he designed some of the climate change modelling tools Maloney was referring to.
A free computer modelling tool written chiefly by DeLong is available on the ministry's website.
"Drought is one of the leading causes of forest mortality related to climate change," said DeLong of the program. "We have developed a tool to predict risk of stand-level tree species mortality from drought and drought-related insect attack... Knowledge of tree species drought tolerance limits, [can then be used] to develop tree mortality risk maps... This tool thus provides information at an appropriate scale to guide operational forest management adaptation to climate change and compliments other tools such as large-scale bioclimate envelope models."
Maloney said the academics applied to the pine beetle problem, forestry adaptation needs, and other climate change factors in the B.C. forest have been impressive but hardly enough.
"Funding the research to investigate it further is important," he said. "But we are also in challenging times with the economy so getting money has also presented itself as a problem."
SIDEBAR
The results are not conclusive about dry dust in the air, but the indications were strong enough at two sawmill blast-sites that WorksSafeBC ordered all B.C. sawmills to clean up from top to bottom.
Should the dust theory prove true, it would be the first time local deaths - Robert Luggi Jr., Carl Charlie, Glenn Roche and Alan Little - had climate change as a signifcant factor.
Thousands of other deaths around the world are being at least theoretically linked to global climate change, including possibly the victims of particularly violent hurricanes and earthquakes.
Locally, the hypothesis is still under investigation that Babine Forest Products and/or Lakeland Mills exploded this year because large amounts of ambient dust somehow ignited. Such explosions are common in grain mills, but not in forestry operations. It is under consideration that the mass milling of dead pine trees might be generating sawdust that is drier and finer than what sawmills are used to.
Separately, WorkSafeBC and the BC Safety Authority are investigating the mechanics of the two explosions to determine the cause of each blast and each fire that followed.
