Climate expert speaks in Newmarket

One of the world’s foremost earth scientists believes global warming will fundamentally affect our supply of fresh water.
This would include sources used for drinking and agricultural irrigation, and would also influence flood patterns.
Dr. Richard Peltier will address the new board of directors of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority at its inaugural meeting on Feb. 23. He will speak about how climate change will affect the watershed, and what can be done at the local level to make a difference.
Peltier is a lead author of the Fourth Scientific Assessment report that was issued Feb. 2 in Paris by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's paramount scientific authority on global warming.
He is also a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto, and Director of the Centre for Global Change Science, a new multi-disciplinary research group studying human- induced global environmental change. He uses his specialized expertise, along with sophisticated computer modeling, to predict the impacts that certain conditions can have on our future climate.
Until recently, climatic forecasting has only been possible at the global or continental level. The centre is advancing the model to create an interpretation at the provincial and regional level. This will bring the story of global change home in a new way, predicting localized impacts.
Peltier is the principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Network, a Canadian national research activity funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. He was noted by Science Watch magazine as the fifth most highly cited Earth Scientist in the world.
He is also one of the local heroes featured in The Great Warming a Canadian-produced documentary film about the effects of climate warming.
The LSRCA annual general meeting will be held in the council chambers of the Newmarket Town Hall, 395 Mulock Dr., 9-11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 23. This event is open to the public free of charge.