New model improves predictions for severe storms, researchers say
Researchers say they ’ve come up with a way to bet- ter predict severe storms and pro- tect infrastructure from damage caused by increasing temperatures in Western Canada.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan said they’ve seen winter temperatures in the North- west Territories rise up to 8 C over the last 50 years.
At the same time, temperatures across the Prairies have risen two to three degrees overall, which has affected precipitation.
“The increase in winter rainfall in the Prairies means an increase in spring run-off and flooding associated in the snow melt,” said John Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and
Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan.
“In the North, so far we haven’t seen dramatic changes but we’re anticipating those as the climate continues to shift. We can see a doubling of some stream flows in northern Canada over the next 100 years, which would be really damaging for the infrastructure.”
Pomeroy said his team has come up with a more precise model to predict what the future could look like as water levels continually change. Grid squares to evaluate the weather have been narrowed down from 50 kilometres to four. “It means you can look at the impact of severe storms much more accurately than ever before,” Pomeroy said. He said his team’s research can help design municipal reservoirs to store water in the spring for periods of summer drought. Researchers also used the climate models on the Dempster Highway in northern Yukon to calculate the frequency of future flooding since the highway was being washed out. The study included 40 scientists from eight universities and worked with four federal agencies. Head researcher Howard Wheater said Western Canada “has some of the most dramatic changes in anywhere in the world at the moment.” “It’s obvious when you look at the glaciers in the Rocky Mountains in the last few years, they’ll be pretty much gone by the end of the century,” Wheater said.