Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a critical part of Canada's response to global warming. However, lowering current emission levels will only slow climate change, not stop it.

That's why there's also a need to identify and predict the impacts of climate change and how we're adapting to these changes. It's research that involves a complex mix of scientific insight into how landscapes, plants, animals and people will be affected by these changes—and their ability to adapt to them.

With this in mind, the Government of Canada has identified climate change impacts and adaptations as one of its top priorities for integrated science and technology.

Canada’s Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations Program is a key part of a collaborative approach to the issue. It currently provides funding for more than 100 research projects across the country that are exploring the potential impacts of climate change, and how Canadians and our environment are adapting. These team projects are seeking answers to questions that are critical to Canadians’ future well-being in areas from water, agriculture, forestry and fisheries to coastal zones, transportation and health.

Will some of Western Canada’s largest cities and agricultural regions have adequate water supplies in the coming decades? That’s one of the questions at the heart of the South Saskatchewan River Basin Project, involving scientists from Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada along with university and provincial colleagues.

How will climate change and related sea-level rise affect coastal areas of New Brunswick? The question is the focus of a three-year, $2.5 million study led by Environment Canada, which involves scientists from more than a dozen government and university groups.

Other research projects include the impact of climate change on pests and fire in Canada’s forests, how the melting of permafrost might affect northern transportation, and the health risks of extreme summer heat events in Canada’s cities.

Scientists at the Meteorological Service of Canada’s Adaptation and Impacts Research Group are leading an assessment of national climate change-related natural hazards in a collaborative project also involving Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.

It’s a concerted scientific effort to provide Canadians with the information necessary to adapt to the impacts of climate change in the best ways possible.