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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
As we continue to experience longer and more destructive wildfire seasons, there have been many stories about the effect the smoke pollution has on our personal health. Today, we have a story about how it is affecting landscapes far beyond the reach of the flames.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Nation building: Indigenous council member believes concerns on major projects will be addressed during approval process
- Science: Clearest signal yet rattles gravitational wave detector at risk from Trump budget cut
- Opinion: The circular economy could save the world – if anyone actually knew what it was
- Politics: Ottawa ties stalled carbon-capture project to new pipeline
- Sustainable finance: Canada could lead in CO2 removal if Ottawa supports market, coalition says
- Wildfires: Canadian wildfires had global impact on premature deaths in 2023, new study says
- Urban wildlife: Toronto dog owners’ clashes with coyotes add teeth to old debates
- Still in season: What you should know about Canada’s growing tick problem
A deeper dive
Soot is visible on Alberta's Peyto Glacier in September last year.Sarah Palmer/The Globe and Mail
Glaciers in the Canadian Rockies are melting even faster
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the additional factors affecting glacier lifespans. All photography by The Globe and Mail’s Sarah Palmer.
John Pomeroy is familiar with Peyto Glacier’s rapid melting.
He’s a distinguished professor and director of the Global Water Futures Observatories at the University of Saskatchewan, and has studied the ice mass in Banff National Park since 2008, visiting several times a year to adjust weather stations and photograph changes.
But on a helicopter trip through the Canadian Rockies to the glacier one year ago, Prof. Pomeroy and his team of scientists gasped – stunned to see how much it had transformed since even his previous visit.
At the glacier’s base now stood a lake. The ice was also darker than expected, owing to soot and ash from wildfires – hastening the glacier’s demise.
The lake at the base of the Peyto Glacier formed so quickly that is has yet to be officially named. In the 1960s, the glacier encompassed this entire area.Sarah Palmer/The Globe and Mail
Just off the heels of last week’s wildfire strategy story, Globe reporter Andrea Woo, who is based in B.C., has a feature about how ash drifting onto mountain glaciers is accelerating ice melt.
Prof. Pomeroy says the glacier retreats tens of metres each year – 80 metres in 2021 alone. Clean glacier ice reflects about 30 per cent of solar radiation, but ice that has been darkened with soot and ash reflects around half of that. So even after the fires have long stopped burning, the darker ice will continue to melt as a faster pace.
John Pomeroy holds cryoconite, a powdery windblown dust made of small rock particles, soot and microbes on Peyto Glacier.Sarah Palmer/The Globe and Mail
The team also stumbled upon a somewhat unexpected finding at Athabasca Glacier, located in Jasper National Park. Ice sample tests showed the expected soot and organic material, but also revealed a mix of life and microbes – algae, bacteria, fungi and viruses.
The algae blooms cling to the ash, a nutrient source, and absorb more solar radiation, said Prof. Pomeroy, adding that colleagues have found this elsewhere as well, including in Greenland, South America and the Himalayas.
Kieran Lehan, right, and John Pomeroy regularly visit the Peyto Glacier to track changes.Sarah Palmer/The Globe and Mail
Solutions are in the works. Some ski resorts are starting to use geotextiles, large synthetic blankets that cover and insulate the ice surface and reduce melt. British Columbia’s Sun Peaks Resort became the first in Canada to employ the technology.
“There’s still time for us to avert this, and I think that message of hope needs to come out as well: If we can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions very rapidly now, we can still save many of the glaciers in Canada and we can save ourselves from the worst effects of this,” Prof. Pomeroy said.
What else you missed
- Extreme weather, U.S. funding cuts put pressure on Canada’s weather service, report says
- Catherine McKenna details harassment endured as environment minister in new memoir
- Quebec mall redevelopment to take landscape-first approach
Opinion and analysis
Editorial board: Ottawa should pull the plug on EV mandates
Mark Hughes and Barbara Zvan: Climate risk disclosures must be mandatory for companies
Green Investing
Investors wary of sustainability claims as companies ditch disclosures
Investors have developed trust issues over corporate sustainability claims as companies cut back on environmental, social and governance disclosure, a new survey reveals.
Information about climate-related risks and energy-transition planning has become far more opaque, after companies in various sectors scrubbed data from public disclosures in response to new federal regulations aimed at stamping out greenwashing, according to a poll of investor sentiment conducted by Montreal-based environmental, social and governance consultancy Millani.
- Opinion: To counter Trump’s tariffs, Canada must invest in life sciences
- Bay du Nord oil field and Quebec energy deal can boost economy, Carney says
The Climate Exchange
We’ve launched the The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. We have been collecting hundreds of questions and posing them to experts. The answers can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. You can ask a question using this form.
Photo of the week
Children sit next to fishing boats moored along a polluted shore in Navotas, part of the Philippines capital region, last week. Coastal communities in the Philippines face converging threats: rising seas, destructive reclamation and mounting plastic waste. Even minor tides now inundate homes, farmland and fishing grounds, eroding livelihoods and showing how human activity compounds the effects of climate change.Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Strategizing the fight against wildfires
- The keepers of the coast
- Reporting from turtle rehab
- The rise of weather content on social media
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