Last month was Charlottetown's warmest January on record

Environment Canada has officially recognized last month as the warmest January on record in the Charlottetown area.

Charlottetown was not alone in this distinction. In Nova Scotia, Greenwood, Halifax and Yarmouth also saw their warmest January since records began.

The statistics come from Environment Canada's monthly report for the Maritimes, in which the federal agency noted that all the sites it was measuring had ranked among the top five warmest Januaries on record for their location.

At Charlottetown Airport, the average temperature this January was -2.1 C. The normal average, as measured from 1981 to 2010, was -7.7 C, or 5.6 degrees colder.

Don Jardine, a climate researcher and weather historian connected to the UPEI Climate Lab, said the warm January comes on the heels of two of the warmest years on record in the area.

"Those records go back 173 years," said Jardine.

"It's telling me and it's telling others that are looking at this data that trend seems to be continuing and probably will continue on into the future."

'A major shift'

January was the 18th month in a row with above normal temperatures.

Since the start of 2021, there have been only two months where the temperature was below average. Overall, the temperature has been 1.8 C above average.

"1.8 degrees is a major shift. It affects a lot of organisms — plants and trees and stuff, crops that farmers grow," said Jardine.

While the impact on living things can be difficult to measure, there is another change where the impact is obvious.

There isn't much sea ice on P.E.I. in 2023, but check out the wild winter of 1979

2 years ago

Duration 1:30

If you take a look out onto the Northumberland Strait this winter, you won't see much sea ice around the shores. But, that was a much different story 44 years ago.

"If you look in Charlottetown Harbour, we didn't see any ice in the Charlottetown Harbour up until the end of January," said Jardine.

"That is very unusual, to not have ice at the end of January. You're seeing these signs of the warming climate."

Environment Canada measures the sea ice all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Typically, ice coverage at the end of January is 21 per cent. This year, it was four per cent.

Jardine noted that this can have serious consequences for P.E.I.'s shores.

In previous years, beaches would be protected from winter storms by ice, which would absorb the impact of storm-whipped waves before they hit the sand and thus reduce erosion.