Alberta to become warmer, drier in summer months report suggests

Temperatures in Alberta are expected to increase by at least 2°C over the next hundred years, and while precipitation will likely increase, the province will overall become substantially drier, according to a new study.

Warmer temperatures will mean an increase in the “rate of evapotranspiration from soils and vegetation,” notes the report released this week from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), a non-profit scientific organization.

Overall, precipitation is expected to increase by as much as 9.4%, but decline in the summer months, the research suggests.

A shorter period of winter snow cover will also make for earlier ground warming and a longer period of evaporation, the report says.

“…Alberta’s ecosystems are projected to shift northward: for example, the parkland landscape around Edmonton will transition to resemble the grassland landscape around Calgary,” the ABMI suggests.

“At the upper end, under a high global greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the climate models predict drier conditions and temperature increases of up to 6.5°C, which could result in the near-complete loss of the boreal forest from northern Alberta. The boreal currently occupies over half of the province.”

That will have implications for land-use planning in the coming years, the report argues.

The report was produced as part of the Biodiversity Management and Climate Change Adaptation Project, led by ABMI, with collaborators from the University of Alberta and the Miistakis Institute.

Funding for the report was also provided by the NSERC Alberta Chamber of Resources Chair in Integrated Landscape Management at the University of Alberta