Accelerating climate change, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, makes wildfires bigger, hotter, and more destructive (Climate Atlas of Canada n.d.). With Canada warming twice as fast as the global average (Government of Canada 2019), and home to more than a quarter of the world’s boreal forests, the country is experiencing this consequence of global heating firsthand.

The last three fire seasons have been among the 10 worst on record. Canada experienced its most destructive wildfire season ever in 2023, with fires consuming 16.5 million hectares—more than double the previous record and nearly seven times more than the historical average (Natural Resources Canada 2024). 

In 2024, the Jasper wildfire in Alberta destroyed one-third of the town’s structures and was among the most expensive natural disasters in Canadian history, with insured damages estimated to be $1.23 billion (Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2025). 2025 was the second worst wildfire season in Canadian history, with over 8.3 million hectares burned, and fires impacting nearly every province and territory (Public Safety Canada, 2025).

Explore the climate costs tracker to visualize climate-fuelled weather events in Canada.

Our research finds that to keep Canadians safe from wildfires and other worsening climate hazards, governments must play both defence and offence—protecting people and ecosystems while accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels to limit climate heating (Sawyer et al. 2022).

Climate change makes wildfires worse

• Fire season is starting earlier, is lasting longer, and is harder to contain (Climate Atlas of Canada n.d.; Natural Resources Canada 2022). Zombie fires are even beginning to smoulder through the winter (Shingler 2024).
• While forest fires are naturally occurring disturbances that contribute to the health and renewal of many forest ecosystems (Canadian Council of Forest Ministers 2019), fires are burning hotter and wilder as the climate warms, causing much greater destruction. 
• Canadian forests are more susceptible to high-severity fires in a warming climate (Wang et. al 2025). While there is no increase in the overall number of wildfires, the number and size of large and very large fires is increasing, along with the annual area burned (Hanes et. al. 2025).
• Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada in 2023 (World Weather Attribution 2023). 
• An overheating climate is making Canadian summers hotter and drier, with more erratic rainfall, including less summer rain in some regions (Bush and Lemmen 2019; Gifford et al. 2022). Wildfires are more likely to spread rapidly, with dry, windy days increasing by up to 50% in western Canada and doubling or tripling in eastern Canada (Wang et. al 2017).
• Research has shown that climate change is extending ‘burning hours’ by weakening the natural day-night temperature cycle that once slowed wildfires, allowing them to burn more intensely overnight and spread faster (Luo 2026).
• A warming climate is leading to decreased annual snow cover across Canada’s north in May and June, leading to drier conditions which increase wildfire risk (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2025).
• Lighting strikes become more frequent as the climate warms (McKabe 2023). Ninety-three per cent of the area burned in Canada in 2023 was from fires ignited by lightning; only 7 per cent by human-ignition (Jain et al. 2024).
• Elevated wildfire risk from climate change means that, whatever the cause, fires catch, spread, and get out of control much more easily.
• Fire suppression has increased wildfire risk in parts of the country by allowing fuel to build up in some forested areas, but this is a localized effect.
• Suppression has historically been minimal across most of Canada’s forests: only about one-fifth of the country’s burned area between 1986 and 2023 occurred within actively managed forests where fire was suppressed  (Beverley 2024). Even as forest management practices have remained largely unchanged, annual area burned and the length of the fire season have continued to increase in a changing climate.

Wildfires are damaging people’s health and wellbeing 

• The smoke from wildfires can spread thousands of kilometres (NASA Earth Observatory 2015), requiring school closures and causing other disruptions while threatening the health of millions of people (Lin 2023), particularly children, seniors, and people with heart or lung disease. 
• Hot-burning wildfires release dangerous levels of particulate matter into the air, which is associated with an increased risk of issues like heart disease, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and brain cancer (Egyed et al. 2022; Korsiak et al. 2022).
• Between 2020-2024, increased wildfire smoke was responsible for an annual average of 1,400 deaths in Canada (Romanello et. al 2025). Smoke from Canada’s 2023 wildfires is estimated to have caused more than 80,000 premature deaths globally (Zhang et. al 2025).
• Heavy smoke takes a significant toll on the Canadian healthcare system. A single week of wildfire smoke in June 2023 was estimated to have cost Ontario over $1.2 billion (Sawyer et al. 2023) in health impacts such as premature deaths, increased hospital visits, and health emergencies.
• Poor air quality from smoke hits the most vulnerable the hardest (Government of Canada, 2022). The impacts of smoke are even more serious for groups like children, seniors, pregnant people, and those who work outdoors. 
• Smoke from larger wildfires is exacerbating asthma across parts of Western Canada (Matz et al. 2020), and the aftermath of climate-related fires and floods takes a significant toll on mental health (Belleville et al. 2019). 
• Wildfires can destroy homes and communities, devastate fragile ecosystems, and threaten economic security. These effects have been linked to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts (Hayes et al. 2022).

Worsening wildfires are making life more expensive

• Wildfires can destroy property, homes, and entire communities, driving up insurance costs and making life more expensive (Gerety 2024; Vaillant 2024). 
• The cost of wildfire protection has risen by about $150 million per decade since the 1970s (Pittis, 2023). These costs now regularly exceed $1 billion per year (Government of Canada, 2026).
• The 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, cost an estimated $9 billion in direct and indirect physical, financial, health, and environmental impacts (ICLR 2019). It triggered the largest evacuation in Canadian history, destroying more than 2,400 structures and displacing 85,000 people.
• Wildfires impact key sectors of the economy, including the forest industry, one of Canada’s largest employers (Lindsay and Pelai 2024). Wildfires can disrupt forestry operations and reduce the amount of timber available, hurting workers and forest-dependent communities in the process. During the 2017 wildfires in British Columbia, 40 forestry companies were temporarily shut down (Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy 2019).
• The accumulating impacts of global heating, including bigger and more frequent wildfires, are raising the cost of living in Canada from lost jobs, reduced economic activity, and tax hikes to pay for disaster recovery and infrastructure repairs. The additional climate change impacts between 2015 and 2025 alone will cost the average household $700 per year, and will continue to increase moving forward (Sawyer et al. 2022).

Governments can act to protect communities and slow further heating

• Scientists have warned that the consequences of climate change will only get worse as the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere increases (IPCC 2022). Governments around the world, including Canada’s, must act immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.
• Because the impacts of climate change are already here and getting worse, communities and governments must work together to adapt and prepare for increased fire risks today.
• Federal and provincial governments can promote fire resilience by limiting development in areas at high risk of wildfires, strengthening building codes and regulations (for example, building with fire-resistant materials), and improving forest and vegetation management through prescribed burns and other measures to help reduce fuel available to burn near at-risk communities (Bénichou et al. 2021).
• Forest management also has clear limits. Prescribed burning and mechanical thinning require ongoing maintenance, are too costly and risky to apply across the vast scale of Canada’s forests, and are not designed to stop the extreme, weather driven fires that account for most of the area burned (Parisien et al. 2020). These tools are best suited to targeted applications, such as reducing fuel in forested areas surrounding at-risk communities, rather than as a strategy for preventing large scale wildfires across the entire Canadian landscape.
• Alberta and British Columbia’s FireSmart programs are examples of initiatives that help communities and individuals reduce their fire risk (FireSmart Alberta 2024; FireSmart B.C. 2024).

Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately impacted, and leading on solutions

• Indigenous communities in Canada have used controlled fire as traditional land management practice since time immemorial. Supporting these cultural burning practices can help reduce the risk of out-of-control wildfires (BC Wildfire Service 2022). 
• Eighty per cent of majority-Indigenous communities in Canada are located in fire-prone regions (Asfaw et al. 2019).
• More than 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations have been from majority-Indigenous communities (Webber and Berger 2023).
• Between 1980 and 2021 in Canada, 16 communities (Christianson et al. 2024) were evacuated five or more times, and all but two of those were First Nations reserves.

Resources

• Public Health Risk Profile: Wildfires in Canada (Public Health Agency of Canada 2023)
• Flame Wars: Misinformation and Wildfire in Canada’s Climate Conversation (Climate Action Against Disinformation 2024)
• Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (2024)
• Forest Fires and Climate Change (Climate Atlas of Canada n.d.)
• Reporting Extreme Weather and Climate Change: A Guide for Journalists (World Weather Attribution 2024) 
• Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre Wildfire Statistics

Experts available for comment and background information on this topic:

• Ryan Ness is Director of Adaptation Research at the Canadian Climate Institute and the lead researcher on the Institute’s Costs of Climate Change series (Eastern Time, English and French).

For more information or to interview an expert, please contact: 

Claudine Brulé
Lead, Communications and External Relations (French, English / Eastern Time)
cbrule@climateinstitute.ca
(226) 212-9883

Krystal Northey
Public Affairs Lead (English / Mountain Time)
knorthey@climateinstitute.ca 
(226) 212-9883

In August 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Debby brought record-breaking floods to Quebec, inundating 55 communities. Just a month before, nearly 10 centimetres of rain fell in Toronto in three hours, overwhelming the city’s infrastructure and flooding many homes and businesses. In November 2021, an atmospheric river unleashed record-breaking rain in British Columbia, triggering landslides and floods that caused extensive damage, cutting off main access routes to several areas of the province, severely impairing the economy.

As climate change worsens, Canadians will experience a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of these kinds of flood events. Warmer air, caused by increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, holds more moisture, leading to heavier rainfall and more intense storms. This, combined with melting snow packs, rising sea levels, and changing weather patterns, has created the conditions for more severe and unpredictable flooding. These floods are devastating for communities, economies, and livelihoods.

Climate change is driving increasingly severe and frequent floods

• Because of climate change, most regions in the country will experience increased rainfall,  higher extreme rainfall, and increased severity in coastal storms (Vasseur et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2019).
• Research shows that climate change intensifies many contributing factors that combine to elevate flood risk, including heavier rainfall and storm surges amplified by sea level rise (Denchak 2023; Greenan et al. 2019).
• Climate heating means that warmer air can hold more water than cooler air, increasing the risk of heavier and more extreme rainfall events. More rain is likely to fall in short, intense bursts rather than being spread out over a longer period (Westra et al. 2014). 
• Increasingly frequent and severe short-duration rainfall events increase the likelihood of flash floods, especially in urban areas, by overwhelming storm sewers and drainage systems (Brown et al. 2021; Sandink 2015; Westra et al. 2014).

Explore the climate costs tracker to visualize climate-fuelled weather events in Canada.

• Parts of southern British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces have seen an increase of two to three heavy rainfall days per year on average (Vincent et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2019).
• Climate models project that by the end of the century, a 1-in-20 year extreme rainfall event in Canada could occur every 5 to 15 years, while the amount of 24-hour extreme precipitation is projected to increase by more than 5% to 12% (Zhang et al. 2019).

Floods can severely damage homes and infrastructure, costing billions of dollars

• Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in Canada. In the past decade, floods have averaged nearly $800 million in insured losses annually (Insurance Bureau of Canada 2024). 
• Insurers estimate that for every dollar in insured losses from flooding, there are two dollars in uninsured damage that are borne directly by households and taxpayers  (Honegger and Oehy 2016).
• Over 1.5 million homes across the country are located in areas of high flood risk (Ness and Florez Bossio 2024). Eighty per cent of Canadian cities are built, in whole or in part, on floodplains (Public Safety Canada 2022). 
• As extreme rainfall and coastal flooding increase, the annual costs of flood damage to homes and buildings in Canada could grow three to five times by mid-century—amounting to over $5.5 billion (Ness et al. 2021).
• On July 16, 2024, in Toronto, nearly 10 centimetres of rain fell in three hours, leading to massive flooding across the city. The costs of this flooding reached nearly $900 million in insurable losses, with the total costs likely several times higher (Pereira 2024; Musselwhite 2025).
• Between August 8 and 10, 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Debby brought widespread flooding to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario. Insured losses from this event are roughly $2.8 billion, making it the costliest extreme weather event in Quebec’s history (CatIQ 2025).   
• Canada has experienced five billion-dollar-plus flood events since 2011 (Insurance Bureau of Canada 2023; Manitoba Flood Review Task Force 2013; Insurance Bureau of Canada 2024; Public Safety Canada 2023).
• Many Canadian homeowners believe they have insurance that will pay for repairs and rebuilding after overland flooding, but only about 10 to 15 per cent of households are actually covered (Posadzki 2017). 
• The households facing the highest flood risk in Canada either can’t get flood insurance or can’t afford it because the rates are so high (Public Safety Canada 2022).

More frequent and intense floods put people and communities at risk

• Heavy rainfall events can overwhelm small drinking water treatment systems, degrading water quality and increasing the risk of waterborne disease outbreaks (Wang et al. 2018).  
• Over half of the waterborne disease outbreaks in the past 50 years in the United States occurred after episodes of extreme rainfall (Charron et al. 2011).
• Floods can be fatal, as people drown while wading or driving through flood waters or are trapped in flooded buildings (Government of Canada 2021).
• Injuries are common during and after floods due to swiftly moving heavy objects, damaged electrical wiring and appliances, and the risk of hypothermia from cold floodwater (Government of Canada 2021).
• The psychosocial impacts of flooding are significant, increasing family conflicts, financial stress, and feelings of isolation. In some cases, flooding can trigger or exacerbate mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (Glenn and Myre 2022).
• A few months after the Quebec floods of 2019, 44 per cent of those affected had moderate to high symptoms of post-traumatic stress, 21 per cent had symptoms of anxiety disorders, and 20 per cent had developed mood disorders (Institut national de santé publique du Québec 2024).
• Flooded buildings are quickly colonized by mold, fungi, and bacteria, which can cause or aggravate skin, allergy, eye, respiratory, and gastrointestinal problems such as asthma, conjunctivitis, and otitis (Institut national de santé publique du Québec 2024).

Governments can act to protect communities from worsening flood risk

• Flooding will only get worse as the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continues to increase. Government action to manage this growing risk and limit further emissions is essential.
• Because the impacts of climate change on flooding are already here and getting worse from the emissions that have already occurred, communities and governments must work together to adapt and prepare for increased risk of floods today and into the future.
• Some of the key adaptation actions governments can take to reduce flood risk and protect communities include:
  • Shifting development away from high-risk flood zones: To prevent placing more homes in harm’s way, provincial and municipal governments could restrict building in areas with high flood risk. Research from the Canadian Climate Institute shows that steering development away from high-hazard areas in the next decade can prevent between $340 million and $2 billion per year in new flood losses without limiting housing growth (Ness et. al 2025).  
  • Enhancing flood protection infrastructure at the community level: Investing in new and improved flood protection infrastructure, such as levees, floodwalls, and nature-based solutions, can cost-effectively safeguard communities at risk of flooding (Ness et al. 2021).
  • Support proactive relocation from high-risk areas: In a few areas where flood risk is too high to provide adequate protection, governments should engage with homeowners and communities to consider proactive relocation, offering appropriate assistance and incentives for moving to safer areas (Public Safety Canada 2022).

References and resources

• Three things governments need to do to protect homeowners and renters from the insurance industry’s perfect storm (Bourque 2022)
• Reporting Extreme Weather and Climate Change: A Guide for Journalists (Clark and Otto 2024) 
• Under Water: The Costs of Climate Change for Canada’s Infrastructure (Ness et al. 2021)

Experts available for comment and background information on this topic:

• Ryan Ness is Director of Adaptation Research at the Canadian Climate Institute and the lead researcher on the Institute’s Costs of Climate Change series (Eastern Time, English and French).
• Zach Carriere is Research Associate in Adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute (Eastern Time, English).

For more information or to interview an expert, please contact: 

Claudine Brulé (Eastern Time, English, French)
Lead, Communications and External Affairs
cbrule@climateinstitute.ca
(226) 212-9883

Krystal Northey (Mountain Time, English)
Lead, Public Affairs
knorthey@climateinstitute.ca 
(226) 212-9883

A drought is a period of abnormally dry weather that lasts long enough to cause serious water shortages for natural ecosystems, agriculture, and people. Climate change is projected to increase the risk and severity of drought across much of central Canada (Bonsal et. al 2024). In 2025, drought conditions were felt nation-wide, fueling Canada’s second worst wildfire season (Environment and Climate Change Canada 2025). By September 2025, about 85% of the country was abnormally dry or in drought conditions, with parts of the Maritimes experiencing their driest summer on record.

Climate change is making droughts more frequent and severe

• Climate change has made droughts more frequent and severe in many regions around the world, and the trend is expected to continue to worsen (IPCC 2023, p. 67; Chiang et al. 2023).
• Rising temperatures strain water supplies by increasing both evaporation rates and water consumption by plants, resulting in drier soil conditions and water scarcity (Overpeck and Udall 2020).
• Climate change also alters the frequency, distribution, and predictability of rainfall (Tahroudi 2025). Precipitation is more likely to be concentrated in intense, infrequent downpours, separated by longer dry spells (Lesk & Mankin 2026).  
• Rising temperatures are shrinking snowpacks and glaciers, reducing freshwater availability in many regions, including western Canada (Bonsal et. al 2020; Caretta et.al 2022).
• Climate change is also causing droughts to develop faster, making “flash droughts” more common (Yuan et al. 2023). This new reality makes forecasting and monitoring droughts more difficult.
• Over the 21^st century, the total land area subject to drought is expected to increase, with over 40 per cent of global land area expected to experience year-round drying by the end of the century, even under low-warming scenarios (IPCC 2023, p. 1119; Cook et al. 2020).

Climate change worsens conditions in Canadian drought-prone regions and beyond

• The southern Prairies and the interior of British Columbia are especially susceptible to drought and have seen several prolonged droughts in the past century. With climate change, areas that are currently dry are projected to become even drier (Bonsal et. al 2024).
• Drought-affected areas are projected to steadily increase in Canada throughout this century, including under moderate emissions scenarios (Soltani et. al 2024). The Prairie provinces, southern Northwest Territories, portions of interior British Columbia, and most of Ontario are likely to face the greatest increases in frequency and severity of drought (Bonsal et. al 2024).
• Even under the lowest emission scenario, the current 1-in-10-year drought in the southern Prairies is projected to increase to around 2–3 occurrences every 10 years (Bonsal et. al 2024).
• ‘Snow drought’ in key areas of western and southern Canada can have broad ripple effects. Significant snow losses in the North American Cordillera—the headwaters of major western Canadian rivers—put water supplies at risk for 86% of Canadians living in the affected basins (Sarpong et. al 2026).

Explore the climate costs tracker to visualize climate-fuelled weather events in Canada.

Droughts are costly disasters

• Droughts were an important factor in the recent dramatic increase in crop insurance payments in Canada, which surged from $890 million in 2018 to $4.9 billion in 2022 (Arnason 2024). 
• Drought insurance payouts to Alberta’s farmers and agri-businesses reached a record $326.5 million in 2023, more than tripling the payouts from the 2021 drought, according to the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (Smith 2024).
• Due to severe drought, crop production in Saskatchewan fell by a record 47 per cent in 2021. That year, Saskatchewan was the only province to see its economy contract (-0.3 per cent). Statistics Canada reported that while “activity was up in most sectors of the economy, those gains were entirely negated by the worst drought in nearly two decades” (Statistics Canada 2022).
• In the Abitibi region of Québec, hay producers received a record $6.8 million in compensation for the 2023 drought, more than triple the annual average (Cameron 2024).
• Droughts limit hydroelectricity generation, cutting revenue for utilities, and making electricity more expensive for consumers (CBC News 2023).
• In January 2024, drought conditions in both B.C. and Manitoba meant lower reservoir levels at hydroelectric facilities, forcing the two provinces to import power from other jurisdictions (Canadian Press 2024). In 2025, severe drought drove Manitoba Hydro’s operating costs $684 million over budget (Macintosh 2025).
• Persistently low reservoir levels forced Hydro-Québec to cut its exports by more than half between 2022 and 2024. Together with less favourable market conditions, this drove an $866 million drop in revenue for the utility in 2024 alone (Hydro-Québec 2025).

Droughts threaten the health of Canadians

• Droughts can degrade drinking water quality and increase the risk of water-borne diseases, as sluggish flows and more evaporation concentrate contaminants in water bodies and promote toxic algal blooms (Yusa et al. 2015).
• Droughts can contribute to respiratory issues (Yusa et al. 2015) due to windblown dust from dried-out soils, exacerbating conditions such as asthma. 
• Droughts can increase the likelihood of infection among recreational water users at times when warm weather drives engagement in water activities (Yusa et al. 2015).
• Drought is associated with mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and increased risk of suicide, especially for farmers, who can experience financial and emotional stress during droughts (Ellis and Albrecht 2017).

Droughts worsen the risk of floods, wildfires and ecosystem damage

• Droughts fuel wildfires by drying out vegetation and soils, creating highly flammable conditions. Prolonged water stress weakens trees and plants, causing them to shed leaves and needles, lose moisture, and eventually die, adding to the amount of available fuel. At the same time, hot, dry conditions lower humidity and increase the likelihood that sparks from lightning, equipment, or human activity will ignite a fire. Once fires start, low moisture allows them to spread quickly and burn more intensely, increasing the risk to communities, ecosystems, and critical infrastructure. 
• Widespread drought conditions were a major driver of the 2025 wildfire season, which saw significant blazes in almost every province and territory and was Canada’s second-worst on record (Environment and Climate Change Canada 2025). A study in Manitoba found that low rainfall and snowpack left soil among the driest on record in early 2025, fueling the province’s rapidly spreading wildfires (Amiri et al. 2025). 
• In 2023, prolonged multi-year drought in western Canada, and a rapidly occurring ‘flash drought’ in Ontario and Quebec were key drivers of the worst wildfire season in Canadian history (Jain et. al 2024). 
• Drought conditions drive overnight burning, a key factor that helps small fires grow into large, active blazes (Luo et. al 2024). 
• Drought can increase the risk of flooding. Dry conditions hurt soil quality and kill off vegetation, making soil less able to absorb water. If heavy rainfall follows a drought, water can run off more easily, which increases the risk of flooding (Bonsal et al. 2019).  
• Droughts in northwest British Columbia, particularly during July and August when salmon are migrating to their upstream spawning areas, can cause severe and lasting damage to their populations, to ecosystems, and to the Indigenous Peoples that rely on them (Curran and Marsden 2021).

Governments can do a lot to protect Canadians from the worsening risk of droughts

Scientists have warned that the consequences of climate change will only get worse as the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere increases (IPCC 2022). Governments around the world, including Canada’s, must act immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.

Because the impacts of climate change are already here and getting worse, communities and governments must work together to adapt and prepare for the increased risk of drought today. Specific measures governments can take include:

• Plan proactively: All orders of government can prepare for shortages by developing and implementing proactive drought response plans, such as Alberta’s comprehensive Drought Response Plan. These plans include clear strategies for managing water resources, coordinating across sectors, and protecting vulnerable communities (Government of Alberta 2024).
• Conserve water: Water conservation can reduce the adverse impacts of droughts when supplies are low. In the short term, this can include voluntary or mandatory restrictions on water use during dry periods. Over the longer term, governments can implement policies to prevent waste, such as universal water metering and conservation-oriented pricing, reducing losses from leaks in aging distribution systems, and efficiency standards for fixtures and appliances. 
• Protect water quality:  Increased water quality monitoring during droughts helps safeguard drinking water and protect recreational water users from adverse health effects, such as parasites and toxins (Yusa et al. 2015).
• Strengthen agricultural resilience: Governments can increase drought resilience by improving early warning systems, such as the Canadian Drought Monitor (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 2024), supporting investment in irrigation and water storage, and incentivizing the use of drought-tolerant crop varieties. 
• Support farming communities: Strong crop insurance, disaster relief programs, and mental health supports are vital for farming families and agricultural communities coping with financial and emotional stress during droughts (Bonsal et al. 2011; Hart et al. 2011). 
• Invest in climate research and drought management for hydroelectricity: The sector can better anticipate and manage drought by investing in climate modeling and real-time monitoring (Ouranos n.d.). BC Hydro has funded research and development to improve its forecasting and hydroclimate monitoring capabilities (BC Hydro 2022). They pair these tools with multi-year reservoir storage and an integrated provincial grid to proactively conserve water and adapt operations (Stocks 2025).

Resources

• Canadian Drought Monitor (Agriculture and Agri Food Canada 2024)
• Reporting Extreme Weather and Climate Change: A Guide for Journalists (World Weather Attribution 2024) 

Experts available for comment and background information on this topic:

• Ryan Ness is Director of Adaptation Research at the Canadian Climate Institute and the lead researcher on the Institute’s Costs of Climate Change series (Eastern Time, English and French).
• Zach Carriere is Research Associate in Adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute (Eastern Time, English).

For more information or to interview an expert, please contact: 

Claudine Brulé
Lead, Communications and External Affairs
cbrule@climateinstitute.ca
(226) 212-9883  (Eastern Time, French & English)

Krystal Northey 
Lead, Public Affairs 
knorthey@climateinstitute.ca
(226) 212-9883 (Mountain Time, English)