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From salmon suffocating in warm British Columbia streams to a Newfoundland town entombed in ice, this year's bizarre weather leaves little doubt that climate change has the country in its grip, Environment Canada says.

"It's staring us in the face," David Phillips, a senior climatologist at the federal department, said before releasing on Monday the Top 10 weather stories for 2003.

"Nature is saying: 'Hey, Canada. Wake up. It's here,' " said Mr. Phillips.

The vast majority of Canadians now believe that global climate change is happening, he added. "They are convinced that it is real, not some theory out of a supercomputer. They're saying: 'It's happening now and it's happening to us.' "

As evidence of climate disruption, he pointed to the "year-long parade" of extreme weather events from coast to coast, all representing significantly different types of weather than Canada normally experiences.

In fact, the weather in 2003 was so replete with disasters that Mr. Phillips, who has been compiling the list for eight years, had to add seven extra pages of runners-up this time.

"What stood out is that it was wall-to-wall weather extremes," he said. Extreme weather ought to be something that people experience once in a lifetime, he added, "but we're getting it back to back to back."

The first item on Monday's list is a prime example: the variety of abnormal weather that plagued British Columbia all year. It included 2,500 wildfires that forced 50,000 people to flee their homes over the summer, floods in autumn, freezing in November, and another flood in Vancouver a month ago.

Mr. Phillips found that British Columbia's "summer of fire" had been in the making for four years. As 2003 began, parts of the coast and the southern interior of the province were in the middle of their worst drought in 100 years after the driest three-year period on record. Streams were running at just 10 to 20 per cent of their normal flows and were so "lethally warm" that salmon were suffocating; ground waters were dipping perilously low; and the Fraser River had one of its lowest peaks in 90 years of record-keeping.

By mid-summer, little rain and stifling heat made conditions even drier. And when dry lightning and stiff winds hit, so did raging fires.

The second item on the list was the spate of hurricanes that hit Canada, including hurricane Juan, which struck Halifax directly on Sept. 29. It was the first time the eye of a hurricane had hit the city since 1893.

It tore up 100 million trees, left 300,000 homes without power and destroyed marinas and harbours along the Atlantic Coast. Mr. Phillips said that if Juan had struck 12 hours later than it did, when Haligonians were up and at work, it might have killed hundreds.

"One hundred million trees would have been lethal weapons," he said.

In all, the Atlantic Ocean produced 16 intense tropical storms in 2003, including two in December — a first since 1887. The busy cyclone and hurricane season was primarily spurred by the higher-than-average ocean temperature, another facet of global climate change.

The remaining items on the list include:

• severe winter in Eastern Canada from January to March;
• forest fires across the country that left an annual fire-fighting tab of almost $1-billion;
• entrenched drought on the Prairies and its attendant clouds of grasshoppers;
• the March downpour that flooded the four Atlantic provinces and became the most expensive weather disaster in the history of the Maritimes;
• a massive ice storm in New Brunswick in February that covered half the province with between 40 and 60 millimetres of frozen rain, closed schools for a week and left 63,000 without power or phones;
• deadly avalanches in the Rockies that killed 28 people, making it the second deadliest year for avalanches in nearly a century;
• heavy snow on Alberta in April and May, making it the snowiest spring on record for Edmonton and one of the worst in a century for Calgary; and
• the sheet of ice that entombed the town of Badger, Nfld., for a week in February, covering cars, trucks and homes with ice more than a metre thick.

This unnatural variability of weather is consistent with scientists' warnings of what will happen during global climate change, which occurs as concentrations of certain gases increase. The gases, including carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect and lifting average temperatures. That warming disrupts patterns of weather and spawns increasing extremes.

This year was the 11th consecutive one in Canada with higher temperatures than average, Mr. Phillips said, adding that 25 of the country's most recent 26 seasons have been warmer than average.

It's part of a global trend that made 2003 the third-warmest year since records began in 1861, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Mr. Phillips said it's a miracle that so few Canadians died during this year's weather catastrophes. In Europe, strangely persistent heat waves killed more than 21,000. Another harsh spell of heat in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh killed at least 1,500 in May.

Canadians, Mr. Phillips warned, though famously proud of their ability to cope with punishing weather, may be surprised at what the altered climate produces in the years ahead. "Even the weather-astute Canadians will be no match for what nature will throw at us."