Ottawa has posted a tender asking engineering firms to assess how climate change and extreme weather will affect some of Atlantic Canada’s major ferry terminals, airports and the Confederation Bridge.
The tender posted last week seeks analysis on the vulnerability of the infrastructure to rising sea levels, harsher storms and changing waves.
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It says the federal government wants to know how the sites may be at risk of “failure, damage and loss of service,” due to the climate events that could hit the region.
The report will look at six ferry terminals, including Nova Scotia facilities at Digby and Caribou; the Saint John, N.B., terminal, and the Prince Edward Island terminals in Wood Islands and Souris, along with the Cap-Aux-Meules terminal on the Magdalene Islands.
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It will also examine the impact of climate change on the airports at Wabush and St. Anthony’s in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The federal advisory panel on climate change adaptation recently noted that average temperatures in Canada have increased by 1.5 C between 1950 and 2010, with higher rises in the north.
Average precipitation has also been rising, and both heavy precipitation and extreme precipitation events are projected to become more frequent.