New online map tracks costs of climate-related disasters across Canada

With attribution science getting ever more precise in connecting extreme weather and wildfires to climate change, a new tracker from the Canadian Climate Institute is calling for pro-active adaptation measures to limit the damage.

The new online tool provides snapshots based on news stories of the costs of the climate-fuelled disasters that are increasingly a fact of life across the country.

About 3,400 kilometres separate the mountain town of Jasper from the sprawling metropolis of Toronto, but the two communities were united in costly climate misery this summer.

As reported by the Toronto Star in a story linked into the Canadian Climate Institute's (CCI) new tracking tool, the bill for a single afternoon of heavy rain in Canada's largest city on July 16 could surpass C$1 billion. As CCI's tool confirms by way of a CBC news report, the wildfire that destroyed much of Jasper and the surrounding national park less than a week later caused $880 million in insured losses alone.

CCI's tracker currently links to 60 news stories and trade publications that reported on the costs of climate-fuelled disasters nationwide over the last 12 months.

The new tool tracks costs of flooding, wildfire, and drought. Extreme heat is not currently part of the data set.

"Because the impacts of climate change are difficult to calculate and slow to tally, the costs on the map present only a fraction of the damages from recent extreme weather and climate-fuelled disasters," CCI explains in a Sept. 4 media release. "Costs from weather-related events such as the recent flooding in Montreal and the 2024 wildfire season will be added as more data becomes available."

The tracker builds on the emergence of attribution science, a branch of enquiry that enables climate scientists to assess the likelihood that climate change has made specific weather events more extreme or more likely.

"Attribution studies have now been completed for hundreds of extreme weather events around the world, with over 70% illustrating that climate change was a significant driver," the CCI says. Capacity for climate attribution is still growing, with Canada's weather service a world leader.

But "while we wait for the pace of attribution science to catch up to the pace of events, the broader trends are clear," the institute writes. "Wildfires, floods, and droughts are increasing in Canada and will continue to increase. Without action to reduce emissions and adapt to a hotter and more volatile climate, governments, communities, and households will bear ever larger costs."

Many of the news stories occur in clusters, a pattern which illustrates the compounding of climate disasters, in their financial toll as well as the impact of serial disasters on human lives.

Many communities across the country, for example, have suffered the double scourge of fire andflooding, sometimes mere weeks apart.

In other cases, a single story looms large-at least for now. In Saskatchewan, that story is about extreme, persistent drought and its devastating impact on the province's farmers.

"Economic damage from climate change is expected to cost the Canadian economy an estimated $25 billion by 2025-that's equal to half a year's projected growth," the CCI states.

But "proactive adaptation measures and policies can limit the damages from the impacts of climate change," while paying huge dividends. Every dollar invested in proactive adaptation will return between $13 and $15 in direct and indirect benefits, the institute estimates.

"And if adaptation measures are combined with global emissions reductions, future costs could be reduced by three-quarters, putting Canada on a path to a more stable and affordable future."

Individual Canadians are in urgent need of such measures, with the average household now losing at least $700 per year to climate costs, according to CCI estimates.

"We need to reckon with the price tag for these massive disasters and do everything we can to control the damage," said CCI Adaptation Research Director Ryan Ness. And the map shows that "the costs of extreme weather events, which we know are exacerbated by climate change, are measurable and mounting."