Climate change doubled the likelihood of warm temperatures in British Columbia for 25 days this winter — a spell of warming that lasted longer than anywhere else in Canada, a new study has found.
On Tuesday, scientists from the U.S. research group Climate Central released a three-month analysis of global temperatures spanning from December 2024 to February 2025.
Globally, at least one in five people felt a “strong” influence from climate change. Of those, nearly 394 million people were exposed to 30 or more days of “risky heat.” And while two-thirds of those lived in Africa, Canada's winter was not immune to climate’s influence.
Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut all saw more than 20 days of temperatures made at least twice as likely by climate change.
Whitehorse’s more than 28,000 residents saw one of the biggest temperature anomalies in Canada, with an average of 2.5 degrees Celsius above the previous 30-year average.
And while a smaller 0.2 C temperature anomaly was recorded in Vancouver, climate change made it more than twice as likely for 29 days — longer than most other cities in the country. In the province’s capital, Victoria, a similar climate-driven shift to warmer temperatures lasted 21 days.
Hossein Bonakdari, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa who was not involved in the report, said the results painted a surprising almost real-time portrait of how Canada’s winter is being impacted by climate change.
“This impact is clear. This is something that comes to daily life for all Canadians,” he said.
Federal scientists have found that between 1948 and 2023, human-caused climate change has raised Canada’s annual average temperatures 2 C. Climate Central's latest analysis attempts to understand how that average warming breaks down over a single season.
The researchers did that by taking real historical temperature data and running it against models that show how hot it would have been in a counterfactual world where climate change never existed. The result is a five-tier Climate Shift Index, with +2 representing a strong effect from climate change making a certain daily temperature twice as likely.
Joseph Giguere, a data analyst at Climate Central who helped compile the report, said that this year there appears to have been a perception across the U.S. and Canada that it has been a pretty cold winter.
But when you compare this season’s temperatures with the kind of winters that would have occurred in a world without climate change, things change.
“It wasn’t cold at all,” said Giguere.
Warmer winter temperatures could have consequences on everything from the ski industry, access to water, and agriculture, as well as early outbreaks of pollen, ticks and wildfires. Communicating that idea ahead of time can be difficult, said the data analyst.
“People adjust pretty quickly to what they feel. They don’t think on a timeline of 30 years, 100 years,” Giguere said.
Bonakdari, who studies artificial intelligence and climate change, said that while the temperature increases might seem like small numbers, the change represents a dramatic departure from what would have occurred if nature had run its course.
“Many decision-makers don’t believe in climate change,” said Bonakdari. “We should be clear with the public. We need to wake them up.”
