Flood Risk and Vulnerability Analysis Project - Atlantic Climate ...

5. From wave calculation based on wind speed and fetch.
6. From Saffir Simpson Hurricane Scale.
Figure 3-28. Contributing factors and coarse preliminary estimates for each.
Summer Severe Weather
It is appropriate to complete this analysis to briefly consider summer severe weather
phenomena, thunderstorms and tornadoes, which are responsible for much of the
localized flooding in other parts of Canada;
Newfoundland is not known for severe deep convective weather although occurrences of
summer severe weather appear to be on the rise;
Most extreme weather in Newfoundland and Labrador results from synoptic scale
systems or meso-systems like Hurricanes and Tropical Storms;
Water spouts, essentially a tornado over water, have been reported in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and even off the south coast of Newfoundland, but water spouts dissipate
extremely quickly after making landfall and so typically cause no damage (e.g., water
spouts have been seen around Confederation Bridge but caused no damage);
Tornadoes are virtually unheard of in Newfoundland as heating is seldom intense
enough and terrain too rugged for their formation.
3.4.7 Summary and Conclusions
This section provides a summary of the main conclusions from each of the approaches used in
the analysis of climate change impacts for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Modeling
A somewhat conservative SRES scenario was used in the modeling runs performed for
this project. However, given that global warming has been progressing at a higher rate
than expected (Bruce, 2011), the modeling results are considered to be very likely and
are certainly comparable to those reported in other literature;
Temperatures and precipitation are expected to increase generally through this century
though there are seasonal and location differences across Newfoundland and Labrador:
o
o
o
Summer precipitation on the island remains basically neutral in the first half of the
century with mild increases thereafter while Labrador sees a steady dramatic rise in
summer precipitation;
There is a clear steady rise in winter precipitation across all regions through the
century;
The differential change in precipitation across the island‟s three WRMD regions is
very small though the West sees slightly larger winter increases; and
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