CBCNEWS — Live CBC Newsroom With Marianne Dimain
20260920 100000 UTC
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[00:00:28] Hey, I'm Johanna Wagstaff, a meteorologist and part of the
[00:00:30] CBC News team covering stories on climate change. And we are
[00:00:33] starting to feel the impacts of those changes in our daily
[00:00:36] lives and see them in the world around us. In this episode,
[00:00:39] we'll help make sense of it all, both what's already happening
[00:00:42] and what could be coming in the future. Let's start by looking
[00:00:46] at the effects of rising temperatures.
[00:07:31] Just days before the Winter Olympics in Italy,
[00:07:32] organizers were quietly panicking because of this green
[00:07:36] slopes on the Dolomites, slopes that were supposed to
[00:07:39] host the best skiers and snowboarders. But then,
[00:07:42] right on cue, a series of storms moved
[00:07:44] through, blanketing the venues just in
[00:07:46] time. So officially, that crisis is over. But about
[00:07:49] two Empire State Buildings worth of snow are part of the
[00:07:53] backup plan. And this is how modern Winter Olympics operate
[00:07:56] now. Not will it snow, but will technology come
[00:07:59] through if it doesn't?
[00:08:01] Because Italy is not an outlier. In Beijing 2020, two,
[00:08:04] 100% of the snow was artificial. And of course,
[00:08:06] in Vancouver 2010, snow was trucked in from the
[00:08:09] interior for the local mountains. At the time,
[00:08:12] the lack of snow felt like bad luck,
[00:08:14] but in the end it was more of a preview for winters to come,
[00:08:17] thanks to climate change. So what does that mean for the
[00:08:21] future of Winter Olympics? For places that have built
[00:08:24] their identities around winter, the International Ski and
[00:08:27] Snowboard Federation has floated the idea of rotating
[00:08:30] the games
[00:08:32] between a small number of quote UN quote climate stable venues.
[00:08:35] New research suggests that by the 20 fifties,
[00:08:38] more than 70% of past and potential Olympic sites won't
[00:08:42] be climate reliable. So does Whistler qualify? Well, for now,
[00:08:45] yes, but it will mean some changes.
[00:08:48] Whistler Blackcomb is still seen as safer than many
[00:08:51] European resorts because of its elevation and sheer scale. But
[00:08:55] even here the cracks are showing. Some are skiing on the
[00:08:59] Horseman Glacier was suspended indefinitely
[00:09:01] in 2025, and by mid century climate
[00:09:04] models suggest that Whistler base could see about half of
[00:09:07] its winter precipitation fall as rain. Keeping Whistler
[00:09:10] Olympics ready would mean pushing finishing lines higher
[00:09:14] up the mountain and leaning heavily on snow making. And the
[00:09:17] village won't exactly feel like winter Wonderland with mainly
[00:09:21] rain forecast at 600 meters 25 years on,
[00:09:23] because snow making only works when temperatures are at or
[00:09:27] just slightly above 0 and that window is shrinking by the 20
[00:09:31] fifties. The winter is
[00:09:32] they currently think of as bad are expected to become average
[00:09:36] lower elevation hills will have to adapt to year round resorts.
[00:09:40] The true winter experience moves higher,
[00:09:43] colder and farther inland. So Whistler and a few others like
[00:09:47] Calgary, Salt Lake City, UT, and Sapporo, Japan,
[00:09:50] may indeed be one of the last few places where Winter
[00:09:54] Olympics still depend on winter, not just engineering.
[00:10:03] Recent summers have been so hot in Japan,
[00:10:06] they've invented a new word to describe it. For heat that tops
[00:10:10] 40°C, the new word is Coco shobi. It
[00:10:12] roughly translates to cruelly hot day. It's a move that makes
[00:10:45] is different. It's a sobering, modern addition to the lexicon
[00:10:49] by the Japan Meteorological Agency. It reflect not just the
[00:10:54] temperature, but how the heat feels in their
[00:10:57] daily life, like exhausting, overwhelming or even dangerous.
[00:11:01] The word was chosen by the public via a national poll of
[00:11:05] nearly half a million people. The reason? It's top of mind?
[00:11:09] 2025 was the hottest summer in Japan since records began in
[00:11:13] 1898. In fact, more than 1/3 of all the 40°
[00:11:17] days ever recorded in the last 150 years have happened in just
[00:11:21] the last three years.
[00:11:23] The outlook for summer 2026 is also above normal. The IPCC and
[00:11:27] local meteorologists are warning that the combined
[00:11:30] effects of rising temps and humidity are increasingly
[00:11:33] posing a severe risk of mortality. They need people to
[00:11:37] take action. I think it's especially important for
[00:11:40] elderly, which would be one in three
[00:11:42] people over 65 years old in Japan,
[00:11:44] and they really need to take heed in terms of caring for
[00:11:47] their bodies and themselves. Parts of Canada can certainly
[00:11:51] relate to this. Think of the sweltering,
[00:11:53] heavy days in southern Ontario.
[00:11:55] In Quebec, where the humidity makes it
[00:11:58] nearly impossible for the body to cool itself through sweat.
[00:12:02] These are the most dangerous days of the year. In Japan,
[00:12:06] that humidity is relentless and months long,
[00:12:09] amplified by the heat island effect of these massive urban
[00:12:13] centres. Gradually, yearly, the temperature is rising up.
[00:12:17] So maybe it's better to name the extreme hot day. It's a
[00:12:21] it's kind of a warning. Japan is trying to ensure its
[00:12:25] citizens know exactly what they're up against.
[00:12:28] By the way, the word that came in second
[00:12:30] place in that poll? Chomo shobi, which means super,
[00:12:33] extremely hot day. But it seems extreme just doesn't cut it
[00:12:37] anymore.
[00:14:52] Welcome back. Our oceans and waterways are feeling the
[00:14:54] impacts of climate change. Let's look at what those
[00:14:57] changes could look like and the consequences they could have.
[00:15:03] Imagine sea levels were up here instead of down there. This
[00:15:06] isn't theoretical, it's happening. OK,
[00:15:09] so not in a couple years, but over a couple centuries.
[00:15:12] Which means now is exactly what we need to start planning. How
[00:15:17] we build our cities, how we adapt our coastlines,
[00:15:20] zoning laws, flood maps, sea walls,
[00:15:22] wetlands. This is an abstract. It's about staying ahead of the
[00:15:27] water. Because even if we cap warming at 1.5°C,
[00:15:30] the oceans aren't done rising.
[00:15:32] Scientists just rewound the numbers,
[00:15:35] drawing on ancient coral sediment, fossil shorelines,
[00:15:38] and found that the last time Earth was this warm, about 125,
[00:15:42] 000 years ago, sea levels were four to 10
[00:15:44] meters higher. That's because ice takes time to melt,
[00:15:48] but once it starts, it's hard to stop. Greenland
[00:15:51] and Antarctica that ice won't collapse overnight,
[00:15:54] but once they go, they don't quit. It's like
[00:15:57] tipping a jug of water. You can't freeze it mid poor. Even
[00:16:01] conservative projections show a 1m
[00:16:03] sea level rise in 75 years, but it keeps going from there.
[00:16:07] Right now, about 230 million people live
[00:16:10] on land less than 1m above sea level,
[00:16:12] about 1 billion within 10 meters. That's one in eight
[00:16:16] people on Earth. So no, your entire city isn't going
[00:16:20] underwater tomorrow. But this is coming,
[00:16:22] and we've still got time to get ready.
[00:19:56] Vancouver is one of the wettest cities on earth. Yet when it
[00:19:59] comes to drinking water,
[00:20:03] there is a crisis on the horizon. And the proposed
[00:20:06] solutions are kind of wild. Like a giant straw pipes you
[00:20:10] can drive through. Maybe even a new source lake. Stick with me.
[00:20:14] Let's start by understanding the existing drinking water
[00:20:17] system. I'm standing in front of one of them. This is
[00:20:21] Capilano Lake, one of three reservoirs on the
[00:20:23] North Shore Mountains that catch the runoff from 60,
[00:20:27] 000 hectares of protected land. That means no hiking,
[00:20:30] no camping, no human footprints. We lock
[00:20:32] down these watersheds a century
[00:20:34] ago to act as pristine catchment basins for Capilano,
[00:20:38] Seymour and Coquitlam reservoirs. These giant holdy
[00:20:42] lakes, if you will, provide the water to 3 million
[00:20:46] people. That's about half of BC's entire population. The
[00:20:50] genius of this system is the altitude.
[00:20:55] The mountains do the heavy lifting using gravity as the
[00:20:59] primary delivery method. So massive pumping stations and
[00:21:02] massive amounts of electricity are not needed,
[00:21:05] just pipes guiding the flow down to your glass. It's a
[00:21:08] perfect passive system for now. We're very lucky with the
[00:21:12] system we have. But the system has its limitations. And when
[00:21:15] the reservoirs are full and they're full and they need to
[00:21:19] last us throughout the summer, which brings us to conflict
[00:21:23] number one, climate change. This whole
[00:21:25] system works because the snow we get in the mountains
[00:21:28] in the winter slowly melts through the spring and summer,
[00:21:32] keeping our reservoirs full when demand is the highest.
[00:21:35] I've looked at the projections for Metro Vancouver snow. By
[00:21:39] the 20 fifties, the average winter snowpack is
[00:21:42] expected to decrease by almost 60%. By the twenty 80s,
[00:21:45] that number is closer to 80%. We're already losing winter
[00:21:49] snow as the season shifts, getting more of our snow as
[00:21:52] rain, and we're seeing glimpses of
[00:21:55] what that looks like when we get to the bottom of our lakes.
[00:21:58] Too early, Tighter restrictions.
[00:22:02] 2026 is the earliest. Metro Vancouver has introduced stage
[00:22:05] 2 water restrictions on record. Basically no lawn watering
[00:22:09] until the fall. And so we know we provide a billion liters in
[00:22:13] winter, so 1 billion liters. It's the
[00:22:16] size of BC Place. If you fill it up every day in winter,
[00:22:20] but in summer that increases by 50%.
[00:22:23] So how do we get more water when we need it?
[00:22:26] The first wild plan is the giant straw by the mid twenty
[00:22:29] 30s, Metro Vancouver is launching a
[00:22:31] second water intake at Coquitlam Lake to double its
[00:22:35] water withdrawal. The water is already there,
[00:22:38] it's just physically out of reach of our current pipes.
[00:22:41] We're tunneling a brand new lower intake to grab that cold,
[00:22:45] high quality water from the depths. Think of it like
[00:22:48] sticking a longer straw in your bubble tea to get the last few
[00:22:52] curls at the bottom of the cup. So they currently
[00:22:55] provides drinking water to about 1/3 of the region. And
[00:22:59] with the upgrade, eventually it's going to be
[00:23:01] able to provide more than half of the region. It's a very Big
[00:23:05] Lake. It's also very deep. The deepest part is actually below
[00:23:09] sea level. But even if we have all the water we need,
[00:23:12] we have to move it. And we live in a major seismic zone
[00:23:15] conflict #2 our water has to travel under massive bodies of
[00:23:19] water like the Burrard Inlet to get to your tap. I've done a
[00:23:22] deep dive into the liquification hazard maps. And
[00:23:25] the big concern here is that during a large earthquake,
[00:23:29] the ground, especially near the riverbanks,
[00:23:31] turned to jello. So if a main pipe snaps 30 meters below the
[00:23:34] water, you can't just send a scuba
[00:23:36] diver down to patch it. We could be dry for weeks.
[00:23:40] About 75% of our primary pipes have been upgraded to seismic
[00:23:44] resilient joints designed to bend and stretch like this one
[00:23:47] rather than snap if the earth cracks,
[00:23:49] correct. This pipe here is 3.2 meters in diameter. So yes,
[00:23:52] you could drive a small car through there. It's challenging
[00:23:56] in the sense that, you know, we do have to make sure that
[00:23:59] the pipes are the right size, right material. And it's going
[00:24:02] to be able to withstand these large earthquakes that you know,
[00:24:06] we're one day you're going to see unfortunately, right?
[00:24:09] But engineering can't solve everything if our habits don't
[00:24:12] change. That
[00:24:13] leads us to conflict #3 rising demand. We're adding 35,
[00:24:16] 000 new neighbors every year. Based on forecasted demand and
[00:24:20] population growth, the region will likely need
[00:24:23] additional water storage by the mid twenty 30s if relying
[00:24:27] solely on the current systems capabilities. But it turns out
[00:24:31] Vancouver also just straight up uses a lot of water. The
[00:24:34] Vancouver region are the highest per capita water users
[00:24:38] in in the country. So, you know, it's not a it's not a table we
[00:24:42] want to be first on, I think. So it's definitely a
[00:24:45] A2 pronged
[00:24:47] approach. It's let's all use less and let's plan for the
[00:24:50] second intake at Coquitlam so we can access more of the the
[00:24:53] high quality water source water that we have in this region.
[00:24:57] Even with the longer straw and the bendy pipes,
[00:25:00] the math still doesn't quite add up for the next century.
[00:25:04] Metro Vancouver is evaluating 7 mega projects to get us through
[00:25:08] to 2120. We're talking about entirely new source lakes
[00:25:11] outside our current map, like Harrison Lake or Pit Lake
[00:25:15] lakes, by the way, that haven't already been
[00:25:18] earmarked for BC Hydro use in the future. We're also talking about
[00:25:22] raising the Seymour Falls Dam by 53 meters. And these are
[00:25:25] engineering hurdles on unseated territories. Altering these
[00:25:29] waterways requires decades of engagement with local First
[00:25:32] Nations. Our 100 year survival equation is a race move. Water
[00:25:36] from mountains that are losing snow across an earthquake fault
[00:25:39] line to a sprawling city with a growing number of taps. The
[00:25:43] Metro Vancouver has planned for 100 years before,
[00:25:46] so they're betting billions that we can out engineer the clock.
[00:25:56] Coming up, we're taking a look at stories
[00:25:58] focused on climate change. Stay with us.
[00:28:10] And we're back. So how do these changing temperatures impact
[00:28:13] wildlife? Well, just like humans, animals,
[00:28:15] plants, insects are forced to adapt to
[00:28:17] our changing world. For some it means shrinking habitats,
[00:28:21] but for others new opportunities.
[00:28:27] A colony of Penguins on an Antarctic island,
[00:28:29] dramatically shifting their behaviour in the face of
[00:28:32] climate change. We don't know whether to be
[00:28:35] a happy or or very sad yet, but for now we're alarmed. The
[00:28:39] big change? The birds are breeding earlier,
[00:28:42] a shift that's happening at record speed. Ignacio Martinez
[00:28:46] led a decade long study on three species of Antarctic
[00:28:50] Penguins. The sweeping survey relied on time lapse cameras
[00:28:54] monitoring 37 colonies of Penguins in a region warming
[00:28:58] three times faster than the rest of the world. All three,
[00:29:02] Gentoo, Chinstrap and Adelie, moved up their breeding seasons.
[00:29:06] Gentoos had the biggest change 13 days earlier on average,
[00:29:10] and up to 24 days for some colonies. When we looked at the
[00:29:14] time series of 10 years one after the other,
[00:29:17] we realized like oh damn, this is the fastest change in
[00:29:21] any vertebrate ever.
[00:29:23] Shifting breeding patterns could help some species adapt
[00:29:26] to climate change and has been seen in other plants and
[00:29:30] animals, but it's not good news for all.
[00:29:33] And that could pit Penguin species against each other over
[00:29:36] scarce food and land. Like we only have one species. The
[00:29:40] chances that species survives is very scarce.
[00:29:44] Martinez says the findings suggest there could be winners
[00:29:48] and losers of climate change, but overall it paints A
[00:29:51] concerning picture for the future of Antarctic Penguins.
[00:29:55] In Ayat Singh, CBC News, Toronto.
[00:29:59] Scientists have confirmed something that shouldn't have
[00:30:01] happened. The first sighting of a mosquito in Iceland. The news
[00:30:05] sent a buzz around the world. It was a surprise because it
[00:30:08] was the only country in the world that was mosquito free.
[00:30:11] But the story isn't really about Iceland,
[00:30:14] it's about what it means for Canada. Canadian scientists are
[00:30:17] already modeling what our mosquito future might look like
[00:30:20] as the climate warms. There are roughly 80 different mosquito
[00:30:24] species in Canada. Some have been here for centuries and
[00:30:27] others are newcomers chasing the heat.
[00:30:29] But Canada's north is warming four times faster than the rest
[00:30:33] of the world, meaning some parts of the
[00:30:36] country are entering into the perfect breeding temperature
[00:30:39] range for mosquitoes. And many of the newcomers carry disease.
[00:30:43] It is Kulick PNS, which is the vector for West
[00:30:46] Nile virus, so it has spread geographically
[00:30:49] from the east of Canada all the way out to the West,
[00:30:52] most recently seeing it in Edmonton and in Calgary in 2022.
[00:30:56] These are, this is a species of mosquito
[00:30:59] that we have never seen previously in these parts of Canada. A species once limited by cold is