Abstract
Climate change is impacting different parts of Canada in a diverse manner. Impacts on temperature, precipitation, and stream flows have been reviewed and discussed region and province-wise. The average warming in Canada was 1.6 °C during the 20th century, which is 0.6 °C above the global average. Spatially, southern and western parts got warmer than others, and temporally winters got warmer than summers. Explicit implications include loss of Arctic ice @ 12.8% per decade, retreat of British Columbian glaciers @ 40–70 giga-tons/year, and sea level rise of 32 cm/20th century on the east coast, etc. The average precipitation increased since 1950s from under 500 to around 600 mm/year, with up to a 10% reduction in Prairies and up to a 35% increase in northern and southern parts. Precipitation patterns exhibited short-intense trends, due to which urban drainage and other hydraulic structures may require re-designing. Streamflow patterns exhibited stability overall with a temporal re-distribution and intense peaks. However, surface water withdrawals were well under sustainable limits. For agriculture, the rainfed and semi-arid regions may require supplemental irrigation during summers. Availability of water is mostly not a limitation, but the raised energy demands thereof are. Supplemental irrigation by water and energy-efficient systems, adaptation, and regulation can ensure sustainability under the changing climate.
Highlights
Canada is geographically the second-largest country in the world, expanding over9.98 million km2
Canada is rich in freshwater resources with precipitation, rivers, lakes, and groundwater and has around 20% of the world’s freshwater resources [4]
It is not uniformly distributed as 60% of the streamflow is in the north, while 84% of the population lives in the south
Summary
Canada is geographically the second-largest country in the world, expanding over. 9.98 million km. Canada ispose impacted by climate change in terms ofarticle warming, precipitation some irrigation strategies. WhatThe irrigation strategies can be adopted for sustainable agriculture under paper integrates information scattered across governmental reports and scienthe changing climate?. Governmental websites were was used to extract of climate change impacts segregated into pertinent temperature,information, precipitaand Google scholar was majorly to search relevant scientific publications. Freshwater availabilDelineation of climate change impacts intoannual temperature, precipitation ity in provinces was calculated fromwas their segregated weighted average precipitations for the latest climate norm available, i.e., 1971–2000, as shown strategies in Figure 1a thereof. Rational techniques were used to approximate surface water and groundwater as 60% and 20% of sustainable water availability in each province, which in turn, were counterchecked from publications. The information was graphically presented to better grasp regional variations and discussed in comparison to the sustainable limits
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