2025–2026 winter seasonal forecast
Dec. 12, 2025
Global Korean Post
–
Environment and Climate Change Canada’s scientists released the 2025–2026 winter seasonal forecast and launched the expanded Rapid Extreme Weather Event Attribution system to show how human-caused climate change affects extreme precipitation.
This season, meteorologists predict:
- Temperatures to be warmer-than-normal across the eastern Arctic and communities around Hudson Bay: northern Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec
- Labrador will also be warmer, while Newfoundland should stay close to normal
- Eastern Nova Scotia and the southwestern British Columbia coast will be near normal, while parts of the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and western Nova Scotia may be colder
- More precipitation near the Rockies, and a more dynamic season in the east
Canada is warming about twice as fast as the global average—and even faster in the North. While climate change is altering winter conditions across Canada, this year’s forecast is also shaped by a relatively weak La Niña—Canada’s fifth La Niña in six years, broken only by an El Niño during the winter of 2023–2024. La Niña happens when strong winds push warm ocean water west across the Pacific Ocean. This allows cooler water to rise toward South America, which can lead to lower sea temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific.
To better understand climate change, our scientists have developed a tool to analyze extreme precipitation events, such as heavy rainfall, and quickly describe if and how the warming climate made them more likely. On average, precipitation rates in Canada are increasing, but the amount of precipitation varies widely across the country. Some locations on the west coast receive an average of 3,000 millimetres of precipitation in a year, while areas of the Prairies and the Far North can receive around 300 millimetres.
Researchers have analyzed 42 of the most extreme precipitation events across Canada since June 2025 and determined that 39 were made more likely to occur by human-caused climate change. Three additional events were made much more likely.
