Justine Carr, Centretown News
Global warming will significantly reduce skating time on the Rideau Canal in the future.Rising temperatures will shrink ice time on the Rideau Canal in coming decades, according to research in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The McGill University researchers behind the study predict the skating season on the city landmark will be less than 50 days on average by 2040, about eight fewer days than skaters enjoyed between 1972 and 2013. By 2090, skaters will have less than 29 days to hit the ice.
“Skating is just a perfect example of something that Canadians do that really relies upon having a cold climate,” lead researcher Jeremy Brammer says. “And as things warm up, it’s going to be a lot harder to get out and skate on the backyard rink or the pond in the neighbourhood.”
Brammer and his team cautioned that their predictions “appear optimistic” given that scientists “have consistently underestimated the accelerating rate of global warming since 1983.”
The skating season on the canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has declined by about five days per decade since the early 1970s, according to the study.
Unpredictability is nothing new for the canal, NCC spokesperson Jean Wolff says.
“One cannot say the skateway will open at this fixed dated and close at this fixed date. And that is part of its appeal,” he says.
In 2005, the NCC produced its own study of how climate change will affect the canal, predicting sharp declines to the average length of the skating season. According to that report, skaters will only be able to hit the canal for an average one week a year by 2080.
In the meantime, Wolff says, “we deal with the seasons and the temperature as they come.”
Skaters made 1.2 million visits to the canal last year during a particularly long season that lasted 71 days.
Ottawa Tourism spokesperson Jantine Van Kregten says skaters are made up of locals and visitors from Canada and around the world for whom skating on the Rideau Canal is “a bucket list experience.”All those visitors translate into dollars spent at Ottawa businesses.
“They’re eating in our restaurants, they’re going to our museums, they’re shopping in our shopping centres, they’re staying in our hotels – there’s definitely a spin-off effect there,” Van Kregten says.
Van Kregten isn’t worried yet about what warming temperatures will mean for local tourism. The trend toward shorter skating seasons will continue to be slow, she says, noting that last year’s skating season was the longest in almost a decade.
“It’s a gradual process, so it’s not like the tap has been turned off from one year to the next.”
Meanwhile, Van Kregten pointed out that two skating rinks, each just steps from the canal, at city hall and Lansdowne Park, have been built to compliment the skateway and extend the skating season.
She noted that measures such as using tents to shield ice sculptures from rain, wind and sun are already taken during Winterlude.
Van Kregten suggested that if the trend toward shorter skating seasons accelerates, added measures might have to be thought up to keep tourists coming to Ottawa in winter.
But nothing can replace skating on the Rideau Canal, says Van Kregten.
“It is one of the coolest things about living in this city.”