Environment Canada Climatologist: "Expect The Unexpected" After Extreme Maritimes Storm

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But where is this wild weather coming from and can we expect more of it? It’s a tough question to answer, Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said. There’s no doubt people are noticing more frequent intense weather systems than in the past, he said, but scientists have yet to prove that’s the case.

“Scientists are very cautious about making a statement. They have to be 95 per cent confident before they say something that is so obvious to the general public,” Phillips said. “Our weather is different now. Yeah, climatologists would say that, but they need the rigour of (scientific) experiments and setups to be able to prove that.”

There’s no denying the world is warmer due to climate change, he said. Over the last 70 years, Phillips said, temperatures in Newfoundland and Labrador have increased 1.2 degrees in summer, 1.2 degrees in the fall and 0.7 degrees in winter. “It may not seem like a lot, but it doesn’t take a lot of global warming to create impacts and fallouts from a warmer world,” said Phillips, adding that this province’s disruptive weather usually comes from the south.

He said Newfoundland has always been “the laboratory of extreme weather patterns,” being on the tail end of many systems in North America. But what has changed, he said, is the variability — systems are attacking from different directions. “It’s not just all from the southwest. You can be clobbered from almost any direction,” he said. “There are those wild swings, which likely is part of climate change. “And climate change doesn’t create weather. It energizes it. It’s like steroids for storms, in a way. It makes storms stronger than it would’ve been. It’s got more potential to give you a nasty blow. That’s what scientists are focusing on.

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