Warmer Labrador temperatures spell trouble for coastal sea ice season – CBC.ca
Nfld. & Labrador·New
People throughout central and coastal Labrador have been grappling with warmer than expected temperatures this year, and Environment Canada warns this is looking like the new trend.
Researcher warns warmer temperatures are here to stay
Heidi Atter · CBC News
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People throughout central and coastal Labrador have been grappling with warmer than expected temperatures this year, and Environment Canada warns this is looking like the new trend.
“Last winter was different because it was nice and cold, but winters before that were always warm like this. I can recall a couple of Christmases ago, on Christmas Eve, I was barbecuing out on my deck barefoot,” said Rex Holwell from Nain.
Holwell, manager of Nunatsiavut Operations with SmartICE, a community-based social enterprise that offers climate change adaptation tools while working with traditional Inuit knowledge.
Holwell said so far this year, he hasn’t seen the signs of freeze-up.
“We’ll usually get cold temperatures and then we’ll see the salt water start to steam. That’s a good indicator that freeze-up, it’s not long away,” Holwell said.
“We haven’t even seen the temperatures for this steam-up to happen.”
An Environment Canada researcher says this warmer start to winter is a double whammy: a product of both climate change and a warm air system currently settling across eastern North America.
“This specific event is just a response to the atmospheric circulation at the moment. It’s just kind of pumping this warm Atlantic air, keeping it over eastern North America,” said Chris Derksen, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The warmer system means higher day-to-day temperatures on top of the long-term warming of climate change, Derksen said.
“It’s definitely a departure from normal,” Derksen said. “But over time we would expect the baseline normal temperatures to also increase. So I think residents of the area have to prepare themselves.”
When it comes to the sea ice, Derksen said “land-fast” ice forms and grows off the coast of Labrador and joins with ice plates that form in the Davis Strait area off Baffin Island. The Davis Strait ice is forming well this year, but so far there’s no land-fast ice yet, he said.
WATCH | Nunatsiavut residents describe the toll thinning sea ice is taking on communities:
Shrinking sea ice in northern Labrador
Nunatsiavut residents describe the thinning sea ice, and the toll it’s taking in their communities
“I wish I had better news,” Derksen said. “The forecast models are predicting continued above-normal temperatures for December … [and] into January as well.”
Derksen said on an international level, there needs to be an effort to combat climate change. The warmer the planet, he points out, the less sea ice Canada will have.
Loss of cultural practices
Holwell is concerned the shorter ice season is going to mean the ice won’t be as safe and it’ll be a shorter ice season for people to be out on the land, hunting seal and waterfowl. Within his lifetime, he worries there may be no more ice to monitor.
“The sea ice really is our highway,” Holwell said. “With climate change, we’re seeing the need for our technology [to monitor sea ice thickness] in these communities. But I can imagine there will be a point where we’re not going to need our technology because there won’t be any sea ice.”
It’ll be a huge loss of culture when it happens, Holwell said.
Holwell is also taking more precautions himself and recommending others do the same. He said people have faster snowmobiles than in previous decades and are taking more risks on the sea ice as a result.
“Is my maybe 10 partridges that I think I’m going to get, is it really worth me falling through the ice and losing my snowmobile, or ultimately … maybe somebody will lose their life?” Holwell said.
“Don’t take the risk.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heidi Atter is a journalist working in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador. She started with CBC Saskatchewan after a successful internship and has a passion for character-driven stories. Heidi moved to Labrador in August 2021. She has worked as a reporter, web writer, associate producer and show director, and has worked in Edmonton, at the Wainwright military base, and in Adazi, Latvia. Story ideas? Email heidi.atter@cbc.ca.
