Hot summer ahead?

Hard to miss this on the cover of the Globe and Mail. The seasonal forecast from Environment Canada calls for a hot, dry summer across almost all of Canada. If correct, it would be an interesting backdrop for a debate about the Conservative government's upcoming "Made-in-Canada" climate plan.

The Globe and Mail story has this quote:

"We never forecast records . . . [but] when you roll the dice, it comes up warmer day after day, year after year," said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada. "Our ancestors dealt with colder seasons than we have now," he added in an interview yesterday. "You could be seduced into thinking this is climate change. I think it is."

Phillips, the primary Env't Canada voice to the media, is always careful to point out that you cannot attribute a weather event or warm season to climate change. All you can definitively say is that climate change should be making particular events, like warmer summers, more probable. So, Canadians, think of the hot, dry summer - if the forecast are correct - as a little bit more evidence of a shift in the probability distribution.

Seasonal forecasts for the summer (0-3 month lead forecasts) are available for the US from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.