Monthly Archives: April 2021

Announcing the WCRP Climate Research Forum for the North and Central America, the Caribbean and Greenland Region

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11 May 2021, 15:00 – 17:30 Eastern Daylight Time (19:00 – 21:30 UTC) – Online

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) local organizing committee for the North and Central America, Caribbean and Greenland region, warmly invite you to the upcoming WCRP Climate Research Forum on “Climate research priorities for the next decade.”

This Forum will begin with an overview of WCRP from the Chair and Vice Chair of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (the scientific steering body of WCRP), Detlef Stammer and Helen Cleugh, followed by three invited talks on:

  1. Perspectives on the role, benefits and science imperatives of the WCRP
  • Climate information needs from a user/policy maker perspective. Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico.
  • Earth system observations for assessing climate-related risks. Susann Tegtmeier, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • Advances and challenges in global and regional climate modeling. Andreas Prein, National Center for Atmospheric Research, United States.

This will be followed by a moderated discussion session that will include short presentations on:

  1. Collaboration activities in the region
  • The Precipitation Prediction Grand Challenge, Louis W. Uccellini, NOAA, National Weather Service, United States.
  • Understanding and Predicting Water Futures in an Era of Global Change. John Pomeroy, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  • IAI’s strategic priorities in global change research, with a focus on climate and water. Anna Stewart, Executive Director, Inter American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI).
  • The changing cryosphere in a warming climate, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Canada.

This is the third in a series of online Climate Research Forums, aimed at exchanging ideas, discussing new activities and opportunities being developed by WCRP, and exploring ways that our climate science community of scientists, partner programs, funders, and end-users can engage towards building “a world that uses sound, relevant, and timely climate science to ensure a more resilient present and sustainable future for humankind.” The Forum is without charge and is open to all, but we do ask that you register your interest.

Further information and details of how to register can be found at:

https://www.wcrp-climate.org/crf-events/crf-ncacg-may2021

Upcoming Webinar – Clean & Reliable Water Matters

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Creative Solutions for a New World
Climate and Artist Series, Season 3

Clean & Reliable Water Matters
Dr. John Pomeroy, Terry Duguid, MP, Oliver Brandes and Bob Sandford

Wednesday, May 5, 11am-noon Pacific Time

Water is life. A secure and reliable supply of water is essential for all life forms.

This webinar will demonstrate that water is becoming increasingly insecure and unreliable due to climate change and increased demand by a growing population. Although a global challenge, this webinar will demonstrate the nature of this risk in Canada and how governments and communities are rising to the challenge.

For more information and to register for the live webinar and free video replays, go to: https://creativelyunited.org/climate-artists-series/

Centre hydrologists presenting at EGU21

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Researchers from the Centre for Hydrology will be presenting at the European Geophysical Union Annual Assembly, EGU 21, this week.

Quantifying streamflow predictability across North America on sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales
Louise Arnal, Martyn Clark, Vincent Vionnet, Vincent Fortin, Alain Pietroniro, and Andy Wood
Mon, 26 Apr, 15:45–15:47

Facilitating reproducible science: a workflow for setting up SUMMA simulations anywhere on the globe
Wouter Knoben, Shervan Gharari, and Martyn Clark
Tue, 27 Apr, 15:55–15:57

Exploring the Art-Science Interface
Convener: Kelly Stanford | Co-conveners: Daniel Parsons, Konstantin Novoselov, Louise Arnal
Wed, 28 Apr, 09:00–12:30 (CEST)

Large-sample hydrology: characterizing and understanding hydrologic diversity and catchment organization
Convener: Wouter Knoben | Co-conveners: Daniele Ganora, Nans Addor, Stacey Archfield, Sara Lindersson, Sandra Pool, Nicolas Vasquez
Wed, 28 Apr, 09:00–10:30 (CEST)

The Virtual Water Gallery: a collaborative science and art project
Louise Arnal, Martyn Clark, Stacey Dumanski, and John Pomeroy
Wed, 28 Apr, 11:04–11:06

Climate change impact on the hydrological functioning of the mountain lakes: a conceptual framework
Daniel Amaro Medina and Cherie Westbrook
Wed, 28 Apr, 15:39–15:41

Progress on a comprehensive earth system model evaluation framework
Wouter Knoben, Vincent Vionnet, and Martyn Clark
Thu, 29 Apr, 09:35–09:37

Comparing impact of ERA5 vs ERAInterim on hydrology using the eWaterCycle Open Hydrological Platform
Rolf Hut, Niels Drost, Jerom Aerts, Laurene Bouaziz, Willem van Verseveld, Bert Jagers, Fedor Baart, Jannis Hoch, Lieke Melsen, Andrew Bennett, Lousie Arnal, Fabrizio Fenicia, Leonard Santos, Emiliano Gelati, Marco dal Molin, Wouter Knoben, Shervan Gharari, Caitlyn Hall, and Eric Hutton and the the Netherlands eSciencecenter eWaterCycle team
Thu, 29 Apr, 11:06–11:08

Exploring the future hydrology of a Canadian Rockies glacierized catchment and its sensitivity to meteorological forcings
Caroline Aubry-Wake and John W. Pomeroy
Thu, 29 Apr, 11:10–11:12

Do Beaver Dam Analogues Really Mimic Beaver Dams?
Cherie Westbrook and David Cooper
Thu, 29 Apr, 11:10–11:15

Improving hydroclimatic services for water sectors: from forecasts to management and policy
Convener: Matteo Giuliani | Co-conveners: Louise Arnal, Tim aus der Beek, Louise Crochemore, Stefano Galelli, Charles Rougé, Andrew Schepen, Christopher White
Thu, 29 Apr, 13:30–15:00 (CEST)

Clustering in hydrology: methods, applications and challenges
Co-organized by ESSI1/NP4
Convener: Nilay Dogulu | Co-conveners: Svenja Fischer, Wouter Knoben
Thu, 29 Apr, 13:30–14:15 (CEST)

Reliability of global gridded precipitation products in assessing extremes
Chandra Rupa Rajulapati, Simon Michael Papalexiou, Martyn P Clark, Saman Razavi, Guoqiang Tang, and John Pomeroy
Thu, 29 Apr, 14:27–14:29

Quantifying the controls of Peruvian glacier response to climate
Catriona L. Fyffe, Emily Potter, Stefan Fugger, Andrew Orr, Simone Fatichi, Katy Medina, Robert Å. Hellström, Thomas E. Shaw, Maud Bernat, Alan Llacza, Gerardo Jacome, Caroline Aubry-Wake, Wolfgang Gurgiser, L. Baker Perry, Wilson Suarez, Duncan J. Quincey, Edwin Loarte, and Francesca Pellicciotti
Fri, 30 Apr, 16:00–16:02

New Journal Article – future changes in land cover and hydrological cycling across the interior of western Canada

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Summary and synthesis of Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN) research in the interior of western Canada – Part 2: Future change in cryosphere, vegetation, and hydrology

DeBeer, C. M., Wheater, H. S., Pomeroy, J. W., Barr, A. G., Baltzer, J. L., Johnstone, J. F., Turetsky, M. R., Stewart, R. E., Hayashi, M., van der Kamp, G., Marshall, S., Campbell, E., Marsh, P., Carey, S. K., Quinton, W. L., Li, Y., Razavi, S., Berg, A., McDonnell, J. J., Spence, C., Helgason, W. D., Ireson, A. M., Black, T. A., Elshamy, M., Yassin, F., Davison, B., Howard, A., Thériault, J. M., Shook, K., Demuth, M. N., and Pietroniro, A.

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Volume 25, Issue 4
April 9, 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-1849-2021

This article examines future changes in land cover and hydrological cycling across the interior of western Canada under climate conditions projected for the 21st century. Key insights into the mechanisms and interactions of Earth system and hydrological process responses are presented, and this understanding is used together with model application to provide a synthesis of future change. This has allowed more scientifically-informed projections than have hitherto been available.

Abstract:
The interior of western Canada, like many similar cold mid- to high-latitude regions worldwide, is undergoing extensive and rapid climate and environmental change, which may accelerate in the coming decades. Understanding and predicting changes in coupled climate–land–hydrological systems are crucial to society yet limited by lack of understanding of changes in cold-region process responses and interactions, along with their representation in most current-generation land-surface and hydrological models. It is essential to consider the underlying processes and base predictive models on the proper physics, especially under conditions of non-stationarity where the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future and system trajectories can be unexpected. These challenges were forefront in the recently completed Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN), which assembled and focused a wide range of multi-disciplinary expertise to improve the understanding, diagnosis, and prediction of change over the cold interior of western Canada. CCRN advanced knowledge of fundamental cold-region ecological and hydrological processes through observation and experimentation across a network of highly instrumented research basins and other sites. Significant efforts were made to improve the functionality and process representation, based on this improved understanding, within the fine-scale Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling (CRHM) platform and the large-scale Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire (MEC) – Surface and Hydrology (MESH) model. These models were, and continue to be, applied under past and projected future climates and under current and expected future land and vegetation cover configurations to diagnose historical change and predict possible future hydrological responses. This second of two articles synthesizes the nature and understanding of cold-region processes and Earth system responses to future climate, as advanced by CCRN. These include changing precipitation and moisture feedbacks to the atmosphere; altered snow regimes, changing balance of snowfall and rainfall, and glacier loss; vegetation responses to climate and the loss of ecosystem resilience to wildfire and disturbance; thawing permafrost and its influence on landscapes and hydrology; groundwater storage and cycling and its connections to surface water; and stream and river discharge as influenced by the various drivers of hydrological change. Collective insights, expert elicitation, and model application are used to provide a synthesis of this change over the CCRN region for the late 21st century.

Read the full article here.

New journal publication – SPADE

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Meteorological observations collected during the Storms and Precipitation Across the continental Divide Experiment (SPADE), April–June 2019

J.M. Thériault, S.J. Déry, J.W. Pomeroy, H.M. Smith, J. Almonte, A. Bertoncini, R.W. Crawford, A. Desroches-Lapointe, M. Lachapelle, Z. Mariani, S. Mitchell, J.E. Morris, C. Hébert-Pinard, P. Rodriguez, and H.D. Thompson

Earth System Science Data, Volume 13, Issue 3
March 24, 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1233-2021

Abstract:
The continental divide along the spine of the Canadian Rockies in southwestern Canada is a critical headwater region for hydrological drainages to the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic oceans. Major flooding events are typically attributed to heavy precipitation on its eastern side due to upslope (easterly) flows. Precipitation can also occur on the western side of the divide when moisture originating from the Pacific Ocean encounters the west-facing slopes of the Canadian Rockies. Often, storms propagating across the divide result in significant precipitation on both sides. Meteorological data over this critical region are sparse, with few stations located at high elevations. Given the importance of all these types of events, the Storms and Precipitation Across the continental Divide Experiment (SPADE) was initiated to enhance our knowledge of the atmospheric processes leading to storms and precipitation on either side of the continental divide. This was accomplished by installing specialized meteorological instrumentation on both sides of the continental divide and carrying out manual observations during an intensive field campaign from 24 April–26 June 2019. On the eastern side, there were two field sites: (i) at Fortress Mountain Powerline (2076 m a.s.l.) and (ii) at Fortress Junction Service, located in a high-elevation valley (1580 m a.s.l.). On the western side, Nipika Mountain Resort, also located in a valley (1087 m a.s.l.), was chosen as a field site. Various meteorological instruments were deployed including two Doppler light detection and ranging instruments (lidars), three vertically pointing micro rain radars, and three optical disdrometers. The three main sites were nearly identically instrumented, and observers were on site at Fortress Mountain Powerline and Nipika Mountain Resort during precipitation events to take manual observations of precipitation type and microphotographs of solid particles. The objective of the field campaign was to gather high-temporal-frequency meteorological data and to compare the different conditions on either side of the divide to study the precipitation processes that can lead to catastrophic flooding in the region. Details on field sites, instrumentation used, and collection methods are discussed. Data from the study are publicly accessible from the Federated Research Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0221 (Thériault et al., 2020). This dataset will be used to study atmospheric conditions associated with precipitation events documented simultaneously on either side of a continental divide. This paper also provides a sample of the data gathered during a precipitation event.

Read more here.

New journal publication: human-water systems

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Conceptualizing Cascading Effects of Resilience in Human–Water Systems

Li Xu, Feng Mao, James S. Famiglietti, John W. Pomeroy, Claudia Pahl-Wostl

Multisystemic Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Contexts of Change
March, 2021
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190095888.001.0001

Abstract:
People and water interact over time and across space as coupled systems. Investigating the resilience of such coupling should take a multisystemic approach to address not only the resilience in different human and water systems, but also the interrelationship between their resilience processes. Based on the three framings of resilience in the coupled human–water context (i.e., social resilience, hydrological resilience, and socio-hydrological resilience), a conceptual framework is proposed for understanding the cascading effects of resilience along a chain of resilience change across systems and scales. The authors use a case example from a drainage basin in the Canadian Prairies to exemplify this framework and demonstrate how a change in the resilience of one system can exert an impact on the resilience of another, in socio-hydrological systems that are under the influence of both human activities and climate change.

Read the full article here.