A new study indicates that over the past 10 years, the Nanaimo region has gained more winter days above 0 C than anywhere else in Canada.

The study comes from Climate Central, a non-profit based in New Jersey which works to investigate and explain climate change impacts and solutions. 

"I think with climate change, a lot of people pay more attention to summertime temperatures, and that's often because it's very hot at times and hot to a degree we're often not accustomed to, but the fact that winters are changing so significantly across the northern hemisphere, including in Nanaimo, is really alarming," said Kristina Dahl, Climate Central's vice-president for science.

The  over the 10-year period from 2014 to 2023, Nanaimo gained 18 winter days above 0 C, and now averages 70 days each winter when the temperature doesn't dip below zero. Placing second was the Cowichan Valley with 17 additional winter days above 0 C, then Greater Vancouver with 16 additional days. 

Part of what makes these particular regions stand out, according to Dahl, is the country's coasts were already closer to the 0 C mark than many other regions of Canada, which also experienced temperature inclines but remained below zero.

"The interior of Canada tends to be much colder than the coasts so even if the entire country had experienced the same amount of warming, you're closer to that freezing threshold along the coasts."

She warned that the rapid change in year-over-year temperature can have devastating impacts on Vancouver Island's ecosystems, with one example Dahl being waterways, which are heavily influenced by the snowpack from each winter.

"If it's cold enough in the winter time and you get enough snow to form additional ice on glaciers, when springtime months comes those glaciers start to melt and there's a runoff for the rivers and organisms like salmon can then run in those rivers. If you're not getting the snowfall you need to accumulate on the glaciers over the winter, you can have a reduced runoff from the glaciers in spring and summer."

Another example Dahl gave was bark beetles.

The main bark beetle of concern on Vancouver Island is the Douglas-fir beetle, which prefers recently dead, dying or severely stressed trees. Stress can be due to severe drought, disease or sometimes even lightning strikes. In addition, inclement weather can lead to boosted populations with wind thrown trees. 

Nanaimo city council , recognizing the global concern raised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the urgency to limit global warming to 1.5 C. With the declaration, council set new city-wide emission reduction targets for 50-58 per cent below 2010 levels by 2030, and 94-107 per cent below 2010 levels by 2050.

In 2021, the Regional District of Nanaimo passed its own action plan and is now working on the , which includes projections for impacts to the region including warmer summer temperatures, more extreme heat days, heatwaves and more. In 2025-26 the RDN is planning to update the hazard risk and vulnerability assessment with how these risks are likely to evolve given the impacts of climate change as well as detailed information on how different populations will be affected by these hazards.

At this point, Dahl said it isn't a matter of stopping the changes, but preventing them from getting worse.

"These changes are already underway and what we are aiming for is to limit future changes in this direction by reducing emissions," she said. "Even if our carbon emissions dropped to zero globally tomorrow it would be a long time before these sorts of things reversed themselves because we have accumulated so much carbon dioxode and methane in the atmosphere."