Climate change predicted to transform Vancouver into San Diego, but at a heavy cost

[logicbomb]

Reducing GHG's in BC and Canada will be a drop in the bucket as other nations continue to develop and build up their infrastructure.

We can talk about reducing GHG's but the harsh reality is that overpopulation will be the driving factor going forward in climate change, famine and pandemics. The first world has set the bar on what lifestyle one should have and many in the "developing world" will strive to meet this lifestyle at whatever cost, and no treaty or agreement will deter them from industrializing further. Many people will blame these developing nations for not keeping their population in check and destroying their countries when major G7 countries were responsible for off-shoring the "dirty" or "industrial" jobs to allow them to flourish.

I acknowledge climate change driven by AGW is a major issue but we are honestly 30-40 years too late. The central focus should be on adaptation and mitigation strategies. AC and air purifiers should be built into new developments, especially care homes.

[svlt]

Yes, the problem is the world's heavy hitters aren't willing to do their part and we don't have the political muscle or ability to economically blackmail those who can to do so. And so, I suppose Canada's leaders want to take us to the level of being able to do so by continuously supporting our #10 (or #9 depending on data source) GDP ranking in the world through fossil fuel extraction and export but in reality that's never going to happen, we will just be able to tread water and significantly slow down our inevitable slide down the world's influential rankings as developing economies take their place in the world over the coming century. Hopefully they make better decisions for the future than the current world powers have.

[jollyburger]

It'll be interesting to see how their predictions from 30 years of data holds up.

Bigger, more frequent landslides predicted for Metro, especially the North Shore
The number of landslides on the North Shore could jump four fold by the end of the century, with climate change the most likely cause.

A new study predicts that the number of landslides on the North Shore mountains could quadruple this century, with the average size of those landslides increasing by as much as 50 per cent.

Climate change will increase the amount and intensity of rain and that “is likely to increase” the number and size of shallow landslides on the North Shore, the study authors wrote.

Shallow landslides occur when soil cover or other materials break free from the underlying bedrock, gathering material and growing in size as the debris and trees slide down steep mountain slopes and creeks.

“For every metre they travel, they can pick up a whole truckload or two truckloads of sediment,” said Matthias Jakob, a geoscientist with BGC Engineering and the paper’s lead author.

“An increase in landslide activity has potential implications for treatment of drinking water, damage to infrastructure leading to increased costs, and limiting watershed access,” Jakob wrote.

“The underlying hypothesis,” the study authors wrote, “is that climate change, specifically seasonal increases in rainfall totals and intensities,” increase the likelihood and size of North Shore landslides.

Rain is the single most important factor influencing the likelihood of landslides and the study identified three key variables: how much rain fell in the three-week period before a landslide, the previous day’s rainfall, and short-term rainfall in the six-hour period immediately before a landslide. Rain on snow, typical in late fall and early winter, can make things worse through the added water from snowmelt.

“One thing that people fail to recognize sometimes is just the sheer volume of precipitation we get in the North Shore mountains,” said Jesse Montgomery, a division manager at Metro Vancouver, noting that up to five metres of rain a year is “not uncommon at all.”

Despite this, the Lower Mainland can expect longer, drier summers as a result of climate change, he said, even as winter precipitation increases.

The study authors analyzed a database of landslides maintained by Metro Vancouver to predict the number and size of landslides on the North Shore using various climate-change scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The size of landslides has increased “significantly” since 2004, the authors wrote, with the average volume of landslides increasing “seven-fold.”

Montgomery called the increase in the size of landslides in the past five years “remarkable.”

As landslide volume increases, so does the risk to housing and other urban infrastructure.

“The larger the landslide, the further it can travel,” said Jakob. “So not only do we need to worry that this happens more often, and therefore the risk increases, but we also have to worry that the houses at the bottom of slopes need to be further away from the bottom of the slope.”

Jakob pointed out that across the Fraser Valley, “you see everywhere how development has encroached onto the hillsides,” often without a full consideration of the future impacts of climate change.

“We will have to be prepared to spend a lot more money on structural mitigation,” said Jakob, who suggested that substantial investment, “in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” will need to be made.

“The government would be wise to start thinking down those lines and create a pot of money for mitigation,” he said. “And do that proactively, not wait until landslide damage has happened.”

https://vancouversun.com/news/bigger-more-frequent-landslides-predicted-for-metro

Analysis of a landslide database curated by Metro Vancouver shows a doubling in the frequency of landslides since 1981, prior to which recording was sporadic. How much of the increase since 1981 is attributable to recording improvements cannot be quantified which implies that it is too early to attribute frequency changes unambiguously to climate change. Prior to 2004, the average volume of shallow landslides was 1800 m3, whereas after 2004, this volume increased 7-fold to 13,000 m3. In particular, landslides with volumes exceeding 10,000 m3 appear to have increased abruptly since in the early 2000s.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169555X21003299#!

A study with deaths tied to landslide events in BC:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.606854/full

Some of the slides also seem to be associated with the logging that used to happen in the watershed. They stopped most logging in 1999:

http://www.geohazard.ggl.ulaval.ca/evaluation/fannin.pdf

[rofina]

Without bringing climate change into it, the factors seems obvious on the surface.

Were clear cutting further and further into our rainforests, be it the British Properties in West Van or crawling up the mountains of Coquitlam, the elevations are higher, the terrain steeper, trees and tree roosts removed for housing and roads, with that all their ability to retain land. It would seem somewhat obvious the region would be prone to more landslides as we continue to build in less and less housing friendly lands, in less and less environmentally friendly ways.

Throw in the ? of climate change, perhaps increased precipitation in the winter months, for what is already a very wet region, and the likelihood of this being a greater problem on a 20 year timeline seems rather high probability.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by rofina

Without bringing climate change into it, the factors seems obvious on the surface.

Were clear cutting further and further into our rainforests, be it the British Properties in West Van or crawling up the mountains of Coquitlam, the elevations are higher, the terrain steeper, trees and tree roosts removed for housing and roads, with that all their ability to retain land. It would seem somewhat obvious the region would be prone to more landslides as we continue to build in less and less housing friendly lands, in less and less environmentally friendly ways.

Throw in the ? of climate change, perhaps increased precipitation in the winter months, for what is already a very wet region, and the likelihood of this being a greater problem on a 20 year timeline seems rather high probability.

I think people focus too much on how emissions contribute to climate change and ignore their other behaviours that have an equally devastating, if more localized, effect on the environment. It's ironic that people build energy efficient homes with solar panels that fuel their electric car on land that used to be wetlands or forests.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Somehow, I doubt we're going to have Green Timbers reclaim Fleetwood. Best way forward is to manage what we've got.

Originally Posted by rofina

Without bringing climate change into it, the factors seems obvious on the surface.

Were clear cutting further and further into our rainforests, be it the British Properties in West Van or crawling up the mountains of Coquitlam, the elevations are higher, the terrain steeper, trees and tree roosts removed for housing and roads, with that all their ability to retain land. It would seem somewhat obvious the region would be prone to more landslides as we continue to build in less and less housing friendly lands, in less and less environmentally friendly ways.

Throw in the ? of climate change, perhaps increased precipitation in the winter months, for what is already a very wet region, and the likelihood of this being a greater problem on a 20 year timeline seems rather high probability.

Cypress Village sounds like a dumber and dumber idea with each passing week.

[mezzanine]

Bump! this is a post 3 wk old in light of all road to the interior being closed, with Hwy 1 and 5 washed out and drivers on Hwy 7 needing helicopter rescue due to debris flow

Originally Posted by jollyburger

it'll be interesting to see how their predictions from 30 years of data holds up.



https://vancouversun.com/news/bigger-more-frequent-landslides-predicted-for-metro






https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0169555x21003299#!

A study with deaths tied to landslide events in bc:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.606854/full

some of the slides also seem to be associated with the logging that used to happen in the watershed. They stopped most logging in 1999:

http://www.geohazard.ggl.ulaval.ca/evaluation/fannin.pdf

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Bump! this is a post 3 wk old in light of all road to the interior being closed, with Hwy 1 and 5 washed out and drivers on Hwy 7 needing helicopter rescue due to debris flow

Amazing update their predictions have come true!!

[mezzanine]

Bump - 5 yr anniversary of this thread coming up

Looks like the western part of the Stanley park seawall will be closed off for a long period of time.

looking at at the original article, I had to laugh at this:

A major climate-change study predicts temperatures in Metro Vancouver will exceed those of present-day Southern California in the coming decades.

Frost and ice will become virtually a thing of the past, heating bills will drop, and farm crops will flourish virtually year-round in the Fraser Valley.

I suspect we'll get more extreme weather in the short to medium term, long term = ?????



source: CBC BC

[Migrant_Coconut]

Yeah, that article aged like milk. We've got hurricane waves, blizzards in winter, killer heat in summer, tornado-monsoons in autumn, and a whole bunch of homeless Valley farmers.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Bump - 5 yr anniversary of this thread coming up

Looks like the western part of the Stanley park seawall will be closed off for a long period of time.

looking at at the original article, I had to laugh at this:



I suspect we'll get more extreme weather in the short to medium term, long term = ?????



source: CBC BC

The Parks Board should have a plan in place to raise the seawall and also to make it more resistant to wave action. I’d be curious to know what kind of wave action caused that sort of damage. At the same time it should be widened to provide proper width to allow cycling on it again.

[officedweller]

You can tell by the surviving segment in the background that the design of the pathway is not engineered to resist undermining by waves. Once water is able to scour the sand from under the path, it was going to wash away. The capstones along the seawall edge were probably loose or nor reinforced, became dislodged, and that allowed waves to undermine the path.

Placing the pathway on pilings may be the solution and would allow restoration of the foreshore below it for marine life. I think that's the modern standard, as has been implemented at Cooper's Park.

[MIPS]

I seem to recall that whenever we get high tides combined with high winds a portion of the seawall washes out and each time they rebuild it again with a similar/identical design. I guess they want to keep it original for the tourists?

Google's cached images says The Vancouver Sun has reported on washouts multiple times where the ledge falls off and the water gets underneath but the articles themselves all have broken images.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Placing the pathway on pilings may be the solution and would allow restoration of the foreshore below it for marine life.

If there is indeed a way to concurrently naturalize the shoreline and have the seawall, I am all for it. I am not sure I support tearing down the seawall, as the linked video argues, but I think it's ironic that humans build infrastructure to get closer to nature, but we inevitably destroy that same nature in the process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HoZJytoHHs

[Migrant_Coconut]

Maybe oyster/mussel beds in the tidal zone? New York's using them as breakwaters.

[GMasterAres]

Cheaper to patch things up than completely re-engineer a large portion of the sea wall. I agree though it does look like that collapsed due to the base failing under. Only so much you can do to protect against erosion so the piles idea is not a bad idea you see that in other parts of downtown along water front especially around places like the convention center and such where you can tell the "walkway" is over the water itself, they built it out on piles.

As for us becoming San Diego, I think that is wishful thinking. You can't change our location vertically on the globe, San Diego is in a particularly special spot where the Earth's tilt is less extreme than here in Vancouver so as you switch seasons the shift away and toward the Sun is far less than in Vancouver.

We could see summers LIKE in San Diego (or maybe worse), but our swing between Winter + Summer will stay the same, it is not like climate change is affecting the tilt of the planet and therefor how much time the Sun is up every day here. What that means is we will see more extremes between the two likely so hotter summers and colder winters, or just more inconsistent weather.

But we will not be San Diego, not unless you scoop Metro Vancouver off the earth and plonk it down in southern California. :| Sometimes I wonder who writes these articles. I mean let's face it, people can't predict weather with accuracy more than 3 or 4 days out even with the most sophisticated super computers. Short term and even medium term climate fluctuations are also barely modellable still. I just think the best anyone even "climate scientists" can actually say about a specific point on Earth is that "shit is going to be changing" but how and when is all pure speculation on their part.

[djh]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

If there is indeed a way to concurrently naturalize the shoreline and have the seawall, I am all for it. I am not sure I support tearing down the seawall, as the linked video argues, but I think it's ironic that humans build infrastructure to get closer to nature, but we inevitably destroy that same nature in the process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HoZJytoHHs

Not a bad video. But a bit on the dark side, with little offer of solutions.

I saw this same subject discussed on reddit the other day and it linked to a really good video that explained wave destruction and different solutions to mitigate it. The best suggestion (in this simplified lab example) was to pile netted rocks in the path of the tidal surges, as they are incredibly effective at absorbing the energy and dispersing it.

Parts of the seawall already have something similar to this (I'm thinking specifically in South False Creek, to the east of Granville Island). It works. If this approach was used on the most exposed areas of the seawall, especially Stanley Park facing the inbound tide, we could probably save decades more of studies and tens of millions of temporary patches. And with all of the excavation for development happening, wouldn't it be easy to get hold of various sizes of suitable rock for this use, basically for no cost to the city?

This is a solved problem! I don't get how in all of these years that a long-term solution hasn't been implemented. My thinking is that perhaps the Parks Board are not experienced enough in these matters, or are only looking for band-aid fixes with their (relatively) small budgets, or are only looking to hold the status-quo to assure re-election. Really, this is more of a provincial (or perhaps even federal)-scale problem that needs a proper long-term solution.

[s211]

Originally Posted by jhausner

But we will not be San Diego, not unless you scoop Metro Vancouver off the earth and plonk it down in southern California. :| Sometimes I wonder who writes these articles.

I think both sides of the debate could stand to lose their alarmist fringes and it'd be easier to find some sort of consensus.

[GenWhy?]

What surprised me most walking down there was that I couldn't tell how the capstones were secured at all. Some I could see had 2 small 2 inch long pieces of rebar on them, and the wall section underneath had no reinforcement or structural elements. Looked like if the stone outerlayer gave way the entire section of wall would just wash out to sea.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

If there is indeed a way to concurrently naturalize the shoreline and have the seawall, I am all for it. I am not sure I support tearing down the seawall, as the linked video argues, but I think it's ironic that humans build infrastructure to get closer to nature, but we inevitably destroy that same nature in the process

They should address the susceptible areas first.
I suspect that if it's the same sections getting washed out repeatedly, then those spots are probably more susceptible due to their orientation to oncoming waves.