Climate change a factor in B.C.'s wild 2022 weather, expert says

From major snowstorms to a historic drought, 2022 was another year full of extreme weather events in B.C. – and one expert feels climate change was undeniably a factor.

"A warmer atmosphere is perturbing climate in ways that we haven’t seen in the past,” SFU earth sciences professor John Clague told CTV News.

The first unusual weather event in B.C. this year began in the spring, when a deep, low-pressure system enveloped most of western North America.

It lead to unseasonably low, and even record-setting temperatures in B.C.

The cooler weather would continue until mid-July, when temperatures shot up drastically. 

The heat, paired with a historic drought would continue all the way into late October.

"We kind of had this persistent summer, it just stretched forever. I've never seen anything like it. I've lived in Vancouver for 50 years,” Clague said.

Capping off the year were a pair of major snowstorms, including one in late December that wreaked havoc not just in B.C., but in much of the United States as well 

“It was so widespread,” Clague said. “We don’t normally see outbursts of Arctic air that cover so much the continent.” .

Clague says the series of major weather events could be a sign of what’s to come, calling it “all consistent with what atmospheric scientists are telling us (that) Mother Nature is going to deliver in the coming decades.”

Clague says while the debate over how much climate change has to do with these events is ongoing, he says a quick look around what’s happened in the world this year is very telling.

“2022 was the warmest year in the past several hundred years in the U.K.,” he said. “I know its tricky, you don’t want to attribute any single event to climate change, but this extreme variability in weather is consistent with what atmospheric scientists are telling us.”

“It’s causing extreme conditions in places that don't normally experience them," Clague added.

Clague says his big concern in B.C. is more droughts and extreme wildfire seasons moving forward, but that it’s hard to tell what’s to come in 2023.

“We’re not going to see the same patterns every year, they’re going to be different,” he said.

“We need to take these extreme events seriously and be better prepared for them.”