Hunters in Déln, NWT, were told not to hunt on Great Bear Lake in May
People have been using two words to describe the weather in the NWT recently: hot and dry.
Data is showing that these observations are true, and a meteorologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) named Terri Lang called this year’s spring “worrying.”
ECCC doesn’t have long-term, reliable data for every northern community, but where it does, the data shows that parts of both the NWT and Nunavut were hot in May.
In fact, it was the hottest day ever recorded in Arviat, Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet, Fort Liard, Fort Simpson, and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories (NWT).
When you look at the weather from the beginning of March to the end of May as a whole, it was the driest spring Fort Liard has ever seen.
Lang told Shannon Scott, CBC North’s weather and climate change reporter, “We had that big ridge of high pressure that settled in for May, but that doesn’t explain why early spring was still warmer than average.”
“It seems like all the answers point to climate change.”
Lang said it’s “unbelievable” how much more warming is happening in the North than in other parts of Canada.
Think again about the places where May was the hottest month on record. The difference between what happened in May this year and what is considered normal is big: it was 7 degrees warmer in Arviat, Baker Lake, and Yellowknife, 6 degrees warmer in Rankin Inlet and Fort Simpson, and 4 degrees warmer in Fort Liard.
Perspective from the lan
People who depend on the land for food are affected by how hot and dry it is.
Leroy Andre noticed in mid-May in Déln, N.W.T., that the ice on Great Bear Lake was melting faster than usual and that the water level was low, down about a foot.
“We’re seeing rocks that we haven’t seen before, and we’re seeing things on the shore that we haven’t seen before,” he told Lawrence Nayally, the host of CBC’sTrails End.
“We’ve seen that before, and when all the ice melts, it usually goes up a little bit. This year, we’ll see how it goes.”
Andre said that before going out to hunt, people in his community talk to older people about how the ice is. But it’s getting harder to read these conditions, he said, and this year, older people told him not to take the risk.
“Our elders and people who use the land are telling us that the weather is getting more unpredictable, even around the lake where we live, so don’t try to do something that might be too dangerous.”
Andre would like to see more focus on the environment, what’s causing the changes, and what could be done to fix the problems.
He said, “It’s getting scary.”
Back at Canada’s weather agency, Lang said that meteorologists expect all of Canada to have warmer-than-average temperatures this summer, and the North is no exception.
She said, “It’s not by chance that Western Canada is on fire.”