Precipitation Change in Canada – Annual average precipitation departures from 1961–1990 reference value, Canada

The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) program provides data and information to track Canada's performance on key environmental sustainability issues. The Precipitation change in Canada indicator measures the annual and seasonal precipitation departures (or anomalies) for the years 1948 to 2014. For this indicator, the annual departure is the percentage difference of the value of a given year against a reference value as denominator. The reference values used in this indicator are the annual and seasonal precipitation averages for the period of 1961 to 1990 (often referred to as the 1961–1990 normal). The indicator helps show how Canada's precipitation has changed since nationwide recording of consistent and comparable climate observations began in 1948. Information is provided to Canadians in a number of formats including: static and interactive maps, charts and graphs, HTML and CSV data tables and downloadable reports. See the supplementary documentation for data sources and details on how those data were collected and how the indicator was calculated.

Supplemental Information

Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators - Home page:

https://www.canada.ca/environmental-indicators

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Last Updated January 16, 2026, 20:45 (UTC)
Created January 16, 2026, 20:45 (UTC)
contains_pii oui
crisis_categories Fortes pluies
criticality_level Faible
data_formats CSV; HTML
fair_openness Level 2 - Machine-readable
geographic_scope Canada
sensitivity_level Faible
source_inventaire Inventaire_W
source_url https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/38145e6c-4184-43b1-afe1-c668a98ab56e
subject nature_and_environment
update_frequency as_needed
year_most_recent 2019-11-22 19:41:43.311000
year_start 2016-09-24 08:56:06.826000