Nova Scotia Drought: Is Climate Change to Blame?
The lack of rainfall in Nova Scotia has thrown the province into a drought. Dry conditions have been building all year. Since January, the province has had about 60% of normal precipitation levels, and drought conditions have become especially bad this summer. In July, large portions of the province had less than 40% of normal monthly precipitation. It’s abnormal. It’s having widespread impacts on people, businesses, and ecosystems, and there is no clear end in sight. So, can we draw a straight line between climate change and this drought?
Dry, cracked soil in a drought-affected area.
Those are difficult correlations to make. However, all of the climate change models are coinciding around research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and new studies coming out of the journal Nature, one of the most prestigious journals publishing research on drought and its connection to climate change globally. We’re expecting this. It’s hard to draw a straight line, but it can be done in weather attribution studies. Scientists use data from extreme weather events—droughts, floods, wildfires, the list goes on—and analyze the data through different climate models to try to determine the degree to which climate change influenced the event. No one has published an attribution study for this drought, at least not yet.
It’s really difficult to do it in real time. There’s statistical analyses that scientists and meteorologists perform to look at these sorts of events and try to attribute what’s occurring that’s statistically significant. Often times, we use anecdotal information and try to relate that to say yes, this looks like it’s probably due to this. What meteorologists can say now is the drought is the result of a stubborn ridge of high pressure that’s sitting on top of eastern and Atlantic Canada. The system is effectively blocking precipitation, swatting it away to the north and south of us. This type of system is becoming more common in our changing climate.
A high-pressure system blocking precipitation over a region.
What our models suggest is that because of climate change, we’re going to see more high amplitude weather. More storms, but also more really significant high-pressure areas that put these blocking patterns into context.
The drought has turned parts of the province into a tinder box, leading the provincial government to introduce some pretty drastic restrictions on outdoor activity. It’s going to take a lot of precipitation for conditions to change, but Nova Scotians need to be careful about what they wish for.
The ground is so dry—fields and crops aren’t used to being dry for this long. When it does rain, if it comes in a downpour, the soil’s not going to be able to handle that rain. So now we also have to worry about flooding and erosion. Now may be the time to think about climate adaptation rather than stewing in worries about extreme weather. Take steps to be prepared. For example, letting the grass grow higher provides more shade on the soil, so it will not dry out as much.
Letting grass grow longer to protect soil from drying out.
Bottom line, if you want to blame this drought squarely on climate change, you’ll have to wait for it to be over and for scientists to study it in retrospect. In the meantime, there’s more you can do than just hope for the skies to open up. Learn about extreme weather preparedness and take steps to adapt.
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