Government of Canada Investments Support New Research for Weather and Environmental Services
A major focus of Environment Canada’s meteorological services is to provide increasingly precise, accurate and timely information, forecasts and warnings in order to give those affected, including emergency responders as much lead time as possible to mitigate the impacts of severe weather. The contribution funding announced today helps leverage knowledge and data that contributes to improved accuracy and/or quality of weather, water, climate and air quality information available to Canadians through partnerships at all levels including universities, not-for-profit and the international community.
FUNDING RECIPIENTS
Project Title: Provision of Avalanche Safety Programs in Canada
Recipient: Canadian Avalanche Centre
Project Funding: $225,000
Project Description: The Canadian Avalanche Centre provides avalanche forecasts, avalanche education programs, and public, government and media access to snow avalanche experts. To provide avalanche forecasts within Canada, to increase and improve public awareness and understanding of snow avalanche hazards and risk assessment; and to increase the utility, dissemination and effectiveness of this information and to foster better informed public safety decision-making by promoting the exchange and dissemination of snow avalanche information among experts, communities, non-government organizations, industry and the general public.
Project Title: Contribution to the WMO Executive Council Panel of Experts on Polar Observations, Research and Services (EC-PORS) Trust Fund
Recipient: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Project Funding: $250,000
Project Description: The funding received will contribute in; advancing the implementation of the Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW) to address the need for a sustained, robust end-to-end cryosphere observing and monitoring system, for Polar-regions, the Third Pole (Himalayas-Karakorum) and other Alpine regions. Activities will include the establishment of reference sites and pilot or demonstration projects such as CryoNet, a GCW "Snow Watch" pilot project, further expansion of the Antarctic Observing Network (AntON) and international coordination amongst 13 space agencies for space-based observations in the Polar Regions; providing expert advice to the Steering Group for Long-Term International Polar Initiatives (IPI) and advocate for a common implementation plan for the development of observing systems, research, services, related education and outreach, and practical applications of scientific knowledge as a legacy of the International Polar year (2007-2008); providing a forum for discussion of relevant scientific issues with stakeholders on climate change research and predictions to help scope Polar region climate activities (e.g. Polar Region Climate Centre concept, Polar Climate Outlook Forums) for the Arctic, Antarctic and the Third Pole / Alpine environments; engaging with appropriate bodies such as the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the WMO Commission for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) and the International Council for Science (ICSU) on improved environmental prediction on all timescales in Polar Regions and to advance understanding of meteorology, hydrology, sea ice and glaciology. Advocate for the inclusion of a polar dimension in ICSU’s 10-year Future Earth initiative.
Project Title: Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Project
Recipient: Farm and Food Care Foundation
Project Funding: $375,000
Project Description: EC's contribution shall enable the recipient and its partner organizations to more comprehensively and effectively monitor weather, water and climate conditions in Canada through the establishment of new volunteer weather observation sites and improved access to the data from those sites for users across Canada. This funding is an early contribution to help establish and expand the program and to leverage contributions from provinces and other private/not-for profit organizations. This initiative compliments EC's Network of Networks project and addresses a priority observational gap identified by partner organizations that require high quality snowfall, rainfall and snow cover information.
In particular this funding will support the following activities:
- Costs associated with the purchase and distribution of equipment for new volunteer observers
- Costs associated with the coordination, recruitment and training of new volunteer observers
- Costs associate with work required to make the CoCoRaHS Canada website fully bilingual
- Costs associated with CoCoRaHS Canada website and database development work and on-going support. Examples includes work required to develop a wireless mobile application for the web site, improved data visualization tools, activating the web site to accept observer registrations from new jurisdictions as volunteers are established.
- Costs associated with CoCoRaHS Program Administration.
Other partner organizations providing funding are:
- Province of Manitoba:
- Province of Saskatchewan:
- Glacier Media:
- CoCoRaHS USA
- CoCoRaHS Canada Board Leadership and Administration:
Project Title: Canadian Ice Island Drift and Deterioration Database (CI2D3)
Recipient: Carleton University
Project funding: $128,000
Project Description: To facilitate basic research on ice island drift and deterioration, observations of ice island drift tracks and corresponding horizontal ice island dimensions will be derived using the Canadian Ice Service RADARSAT Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery archive. This data will be incorporated into a geodatabase that will reside on a server in Carleton University's data center so that it can be shared with other researchers. Areas of ice island research that will be supported include:
- drift analyses using statistical approaches;
- deterioration analyses;
- remote-sensing detection of ice islands; and,
- drift and deterioration model calibration and validation.
Project Title: Analysis of factual (contextual evaluation) and subjective (cognitive evaluation) aspects of hydrometeorological and climatic risks stressors in a multi-level and multi-risk warning system for severe weather and climate conditions
Recipient: University of Ottawa
Project Funding: $200,000
Project Description: The funding will contribute to supporting the research initiatives of the McLaughlin Research Chair on Psychosocial Aspects Risk and Health, Dr. Lemyre, at the University of Ottawa. The Chair has conducted high-level research over more than 10 years in the field of psycho-social management of risks (how people feel, think and behave when confronted with a risk), which includes the factual (contextual evaluation) and subjective (cognitive evaluation) aspects of risk stressors, and risks anticipation and prevention. These are foundational building blocks and an indispensable knowledge to increase the efficacy of warning systems for meteorological, water, and climate services which are essential to support risk management decision making and hydro meteorological disaster risk reduction.
The current research at the McLaughlin Research Chair on Psychosocial Aspects of Risk and Health, University of Ottawa, has links to and will enable the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) to build on the knowledge gained from a literature review on hydro-meteorological and climatic risk perception completed with the support of the 2013-2014 contribution.
The project will develop a framework of the psycho-social risk stressors and perceptions for hydrometeorological and climatic hazards. It will lead to a better understanding of how individuals and stakeholders form their perception of the risks associated with hydro-meteorological and climate hazards and make decisions or judgment about protective action. It will provide recommendations on how to address risk perception issues within MSC’s warnings so that they lead to improve risk reduction and protective action decision making by all stakeholders and concerned parties.
Project Title: Impact reduction and weather risk management – Summer School
Recipient: Université du Québec à Montréal
Project Funding: $50,000
Project Description: The funding will contribute to the organization of a summer school program (spring/summer 2015) on “La réduction des impacts et la gestion des risques météorologiques” (“Impact reduction and weather risk management”). This project is aimed at developing multidisciplinary training in order to meet a growing need in the area of hydrometeorological risk management, expressed in both the academic community (training and research) and in the receiving environment (application and operationalization of knowledge) such as Environment Canada's Meteorological Service. This project must contribute to the pooling of the varied expertise present at the Université du Québec à Montréal in several key areas related to climate change and weather (Centre pour l'étude et la simulation du climat à l'échelle régionale (ESCER)) (Centre for the study and simulation of regional climate), the impact of human activity on the environment and local climate, particularly in urban areas (Department of Geography), and the communication of risks (Chair in Public Relations and Marketing Communication).
Project Title:Communication and risk management associated with climate and hydrometeorological hazards - Phase II
Recipient: Université du Québec à Montréal
Project Funding: $240,000
Project Description: The objective of the project is to improve the effectiveness of the communication of risks associated with hydrometeorological and climate hazards. The work and research will cover the entire communication process and the approaches of which it consists, as well as the determination of the most efficient communication channels for each of the various phases of the process.
The project comprises two other components. The first is aimed at creating a comparative and historical directory of all of the components of the communication of risks associated with disasters caused by hydrometeorological and climate hazards. That directory will be used as a basis for improving knowledge and for developing new approaches and more efficient strategies applied to the communication of risks associated with hydrometeorological and climate hazards. The second component ensures knowledge transfer, its conversion into an applied risk communication strategy, and the coaching required to implement the knowledge acquired through this research and work towards the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and its partners.
Project Title: Multi-Format Environmental Information Dissemination: aids for the compilation, translation and presentation of information.
Recipient: Université de Montréal
Project Funding: $75,000
Project Description: Since 2008, through the laboratory of Applied Research in Computational Linguistics (RALI), the Université de Montréal has been supporting the research and development of an automatic translation system for public weather warnings, and a prototype that enables the presentation of environmental information. The submitted project comprises two main parts: The first consists of an evaluation of the adaptability of the automated translation of information into other useful contexts required in urgent or significant situations, as supported by Environment Canada. The second aspect of the project concerns interoperability between various organizations. This interoperability allows for efficiency in the sharing of essential information during situations requiring an urgent response or preparations to mitigate the impacts of those situations. The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) (Protocole d'Alerte Commun) is based on this principle and permits the sharing and integration of various types of alerts, be they related to weather, civil security, or other. The Common Alerting Protocol is currently in place in certain provincial and federal departments and can be integrated into georeferencing systems. This project is therefore aimed at identifying development opportunities and the possibility of adapting RALI initiatives to the ways in which CAP information is processed in order to display interoperable information that is available in both official languages.
Project Title: Impacts of climate change on water supply in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence River basin-Phase II
Recipient: Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique
Project Funding: $180,000
Project Description: The work generated by this research is a contribution to the characterization of the weather and climate system of the Great Lakes / St. Lawrence (GLSL) system in order to permit a better interpretation of modelling results (hydrological cycle, components and large-scale and regional factors, etc.) realized and obtained by the other project partners (Environment Canada/Meteorological Service of Canada for the Quebec Region, Ouranos, Quebec’s center of hydrological Expertise, Hydro-Québec) and thus better explain and use the analyses on the impacts of climate change (CC) on future water levels (vs. current levels). This is particularly important because the associated uncertainties are substantial (CC) and the components of the hydrological cycle as a whole are not entirely determined or modelled. This work will therefore allow us to better account for essential variable or co-variables to be integrated into future analyses and in coupled models (atmosphere, Great Lakes, and surface or sub-surface hydrological cycle) in development.
Project Title: Using regional climatic scenarios to advance knowledge of future climatic conditions in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence basin
Recipient: Ouranos
Project Funding: $270,000
Project Description: Research to be conducted on future climatic conditions of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence (GLSL) basin. This involves producing regional climatic scenarios for this region in order to support several research efforts of the scientific communities aimed at improving the understanding of the potential consequences of climate change on the water supplies of the GLSL.
The development of these climatic scenarios is essential in order to allow the scientific community, in subsequent steps to:
- Assess the future water levels of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence;
- Define the socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities associated with variations in water flows and levels in the St. Lawrence;
- Identify possible adaptation measures for the various components of the St. Lawrence (physical, living, socio economic, etc.) under a changing climate.
The work will be carried out at Ouranos' Montréal offices during the years covered by the agreement.
Project Title: Conference support for: Trending Now: Water - 7th International Scientific Conferences on the Global Energy and Water Cycle and Associated Meetings: 3rd Pan-GEWEX Meeting, 1st Pan-CLIVAR Meeting, and GEWEX Summer Sessions |
Recipient: University of Saskatchewan
Project Funding: $15,000
Project Description: The 7th International Conference on the Global Energy and Water Cycle and associated meetings will set the stage for the next phase of research addressing the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The theme of the conference is "Trending Now: Water" and is based on the increasing demand for fresh water and the impacts of climate change on water availability and extreme events, which highlight why water is a current major global concern and is “trending now.” It provides a unique opportunity to assess the current state of the art and build future plans for research related to water and energy process and observations in climate and weather research. This Conference will provide access to the top international researchers working in the climate field and their current work. Major outcomes of the Conference will be used to define the observations, research, modeling, and analysis priorities for WCRP activities and their affiliated network of international projects in the future.
Project Title: Global Integrated Polar Prediction System (GIPPS)
Recipient: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Project Funding: $250,000
Project Description: To improve the understanding of the requirements for, and evaluate the benefits of, enhanced prediction information and services in Polar Regions. Establish and apply verification methods appropriate for Polar Regions. "Provide guidance on optimizing polar observing systems, and coordinate additional observations to support modelling and verification. Improve representation of key processes in models of the polar atmosphere, land, ocean and cryosphere." Develop data assimilation systems that account for the unique characteristics of Polar Regions. Develop and exploit ensemble prediction systems with appropriate representation of initial condition and model uncertainty for Polar Regions. Determine predictability and identify key sources of forecast errors in Polar Regions. Improve knowledge of two-way linkages between polar and non-polar regions.
Project Title: Studies for improving coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice prediction
Recipient: Météo-France
Project Funding: $450,000
Project Description: Studies for improving coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice prediction systems. These systems are the future of atmospheric, oceanic and ice predictions for navigation, environmental emergencies, search and rescue and oil spills. Météo-France and its affiliated research groups develop world-class scientific innovations for improving environmental predictions (weather, ice, oceans) for time scales ranging from minutes to seasons. The primary objective of these studies is to put in place new scientific methods for improving ocean/ice data assimilation systems. Data assimilation systems are critical and complex elements in numerical prediction systems for weather and environmental conditions. They make it possible to generate tri-dimensional oceanic conditions that will initiate future prediction systems for weather services.
Project Title: Canadian contribution to open science initiatives under the World Weather Research Program including polar, seasonal and extreme weather prediction
Recipient: World Meteorological Organization
Project Funding: $20,000
Project Description: This contribution supports an international collaborative approach on open science, by providing an initiative to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) partners to focus and accelerate improvements in the accuracy of 1-day to 2-week weather forecasts. The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) trust fund was established in 2003 to enable international projects to address weather research and forecast problems whose solutions are accelerated through international collaboration among academic institutions, operational forecast centres and users of forecast products. The contribution will support three major initiatives on international collaboration on polar prediction, sub-seasonal to seasonal prediction (supporting climate services on short time scales) and high impact weather (dealing with extreme weather).
