Extreme prairie weather focus of university study

CALGARY — A University of Regina researcher and his team will spend the next five years in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan learning about the extreme weather that has become a norm in these parts of the country.

With $1.25 million from the federal government, University of Regina geography professor and research scientist David Sauchyn and his team will also look at whether global warming is potentially to blame for the droughts and floods that have destroyed farmers' crops over the years.

"Every time there is a weather disaster, the media tends to attribute it to global warming, but scientists are not that certain," he said.

"We are going to look at the connection with global warming and whether it's making the extremes more severe and more often."
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Neil Batchelor, UFA crop specialist, says farmers nearly bet their livelihood every year with the weather.

"They live with weather as a risk every day of every year," he said, adding farmers know there is very little they can do about it.

However, a "cautionary" Batchelor doesn't believe global warming exists, instead crediting the extreme weather to an extended weather cycle.

"I think these things are cyclic in nature and these are just a larger cycle than the time period we have kept records for," he said.