Canada1Water: 2023 Progress Report
The Canada1Water continues to make steady progress toward our goal of providing Canadians with a comprehensive data/modelling framework and decision support system to evaluate the sustainability of water resources under a changing climate. The 2023 Progress Meeting and Summary Report provides a comprehensive overview of project progress up to June 2023.
Canada1Water: 2022 Progress Report
The Canada1Water project has reached the midpoint of its three-year project . This progress report covers model development updates as well as a review on engagement and outreach with project stakeholders.
Soil temperature beneath snow cover
Snow cover is an important control on soil temperatures in cold regions, insulating soils from atmospheric processes in winter. This can mean that the soil is often substantially warmer than the air above – in many cases by as much as 20 degrees at high latitudes, when snow is present.
Major North American Lakes Simulations for High Quality Continental Climate Change Projections
While a major focus of the climatology group has been on producing high-quality North American (NA) continental historic and future regional climate modelling simulations, focus has also been dedicated to major NA lake regions’ modeling, due to the significant effect that lakes can have on neighboring regions’ climates.
Climate Change Impacts on Mountain Snowpacks
Mountain snowpacks act to store precipitation during winter, and later, as the weather warms, melting snow provides water supply for many downstream communities in western North America. Projections of how future climate change will affect snowmelt water resources are thus of high interest to policy makers. Areas of British Columbia (BC) have warmed at a rate twice the global average between 1950 and 2010; this warming has shrunk glaciers and thinned seasonal snowpacks during the twentieth century.
Permafrost Datasets: Observations and Modeling
Over large portions of the Arctic, and parts of the sub-Arctic, soils remain perennially frozen, and are known as permafrost soils. One of the major aims of the Canada1Water project is to assess the impact of climate change in Canada’s North, which in large parts is dominate by permafrost.
Research Highlight: Great Lakes Basin Heat Waves
This new paper by C1W collaborators explores the effects of climate change and greenhouse gases on extreme heat events in the Great Lakes region.
Climate Projections Drive C1W
Weather and climate are the primary drivers of hydrology and as such of critical importance to the mission of Canada 1 Water. The C1W climate modeling team will take advantage of the latest set of global climate projections and use projections from several leading international climate modeling centers as boundary conditions for high-resolution regional climate projections, specifically for Canada.