Western researcher develops floodplain map to show possible impacts of changing water levels

Floodplain map shows the potential afffects of climate change From CTV London's Marek Sutherland: A new interactive floodplain map developed at Western University shows the potential impacts of a changing climate.

London, Ont. — As world leaders discuss the environment at a summit in Glasgow, a Western professor is part of a Canadian group that today released information and an interactive map on how floodplains are expected to change over the next 80 years.

The map details data taken from across the country, and low lying floodplain areas in Canada like Vancouver and Montreal may become inundated in the next 80 years..

“We developed multiple maps, utilized the most recent climate science, the global climate models, and the emission scenarios,” said Slobodan Simonovic an engineering professor from Western University.

Those different scenarios depend on emission reduction scenarios that governments around the world put in place, but with climate change comes more rain, and more severe rain.

“With global temperatures going up you have more moisture in the air, more moisture in the air is affected with more severe, extreme rainfall,” said Simonovic.

It’s a phenomenon that officials with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) see first hand.

“It’s really much more extreme events. Thunderstorms, really high levels of precipitation, and really localized, really small areas getting a lot of heavy rain,” said Teresa Hollingsworth with UTRCA.

The map allows anyone to look at the area they live and explore specific watersheds to compare current 100-year flood zones to those forecast under the worst, mid, or best case climate change scenarios.

“We need to realize these scenarios maybe changing in the future and may be changing if we start implementing some of the measure the governments are now discussing in Glasgow,” said Simonovic.

Another part of looking at this data is how to plan, and mitigate the danger of flooding.

“It’s really important that we look at our modelling data, and saying this is where we think we’re going to have issues in the future and we need to keep development out of those areas,” said Hollingsworth.

To see the map follow this link.