‘Sink into the dry as dust soil’: What historic droughts mean for today
Nick Pearce
The Star Phoenix
July 31, 2021
In 1961, Prairie farmers weren’t facing the current drought so much as reliving ones past.
Read the article here: https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/sink-into-the-dry-as-dust-soil-what-historic-droughts-mean-for-today
Image from CFUW Saskatoon Website
Congratulations to Holly Annand, who has received the Dr. Jean Murray Memorial Scholarship from the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW)! More information is available at the links below.
CFUW Saskatoon Award Recipients
‘Immediate action’ needed as heat wave, drought affect farmers, ranchers
The Star Phoenix
July 28, 2021
Heat waves and historically-high temperatures this spring and summer across the Prairies and B.C. have affected ranchers, farmers and the agricultural sector.
Read the article here: https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/immediate-action-needed-as-heat-wave-drought-affect-farmers-ranchers
Southern Lakes water levels continue to dip slightly in Yukon as flood response continues
CBC News
July 26, 2021
The water levels in Yukon’s Southern Lakes are slowly going down — at least for now.
In a flood update issued over the weekend, the territorial government said Bennett, Tagish, and Marsh lakes, as well as Lake Laberge, had all gone down between 0.9 and 1.5 centimetres in 24 hours.
All four remain well above 2007 levels, in particular Lake Laberge, which is currently 32.1 centimetres higher.
Read the article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/southern-lakes-yukon-water-levels-1.6117764
Climate change has arrived in Sask. And it’s ‘ugly.’
Jonathan Charlton
CTV News
July 22, 2021
As Saskatchewan experiences severe heat and dryness, CTV News spoke to John Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change and director of the Global Water Futures Program at the University of Saskatchewan, to learn what’s behind it. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Read the article here: https://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/climate-change-has-arrived-in-sask-and-it-s-ugly-1.5519599
NSERC CREATE for Water Security leaves lasting impact
Chris Putnam
University of Saskatchewan News
July 9, 2021
As a unique water security training program wraps up at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), the program’s leaders look back on the past six years as an overwhelming success.
Read the article here: https://news.usask.ca/articles/colleges/2021/nserc-create-for-water-security-leaves-lasting-impact.php
‘Drought brewing’: Saskatchewan farmers hope for rain
Zak Vescera
Saskatoon Star Phoenix
May 19, 2021
As of April 30, Agriculture Canada said 99 per cent of Saskatchewan’s farmland was “abnormally dry” or worse
Read the article here: https://thestarphoenix.com/news/saskatchewan/drought-brewing-saskatchewan-farmers-hope-for-rain
Robert Sandford
Inter Press Service News Agency
May18, 2021
The year 2020 will forever be notorious for the COVID-19 pandemic but it might also be known by historians for a precipitous rise in second order climate change consequences — a new elephant in the room.
Familiar first order consequences, as documented in the World Meteorological Organization’s most recent State of the Global Climate report in April (at https://bit.ly/3eyrPwU), were the ongoing temperature rise over land and sea, melting sea ice and glaciers, higher sea levels, and changes in precipitation patterns.
Also in 2020, continuing a decade-long trend: widespread drought, heat waves, wildfires, cyclones, and flooding, especially in Africa and Asia but also in South America and the United States.
All these led to the second order consequences: Greater food insecurity and an accelerated explosion in involuntary human migration and displacement worldwide.
Read the article here: Climate Crisis: Elephants in the Room are Getting Nastier | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
The Canadian Geophysical Union is accepting abstracts for its planned online series of summer research seminars. Centre for Hydrology researchers, Chris Marsh, Phillip Harder, and Vincent Vionnet will be convening the following session:
Session 9 – Observation and modelling of snow processes: New advances in an era of big data, UAVs, and high-performance computing
Session Description:
Seasonal snowpacks store substantial volumes of water and their melt provides fresh water supplies to downstream users and ecosystems. Globally, they are estimated to provide essential flows for about one-sixth of the world’s population. Ongoing anthropogenic climate and land use change are dramatically impacting the snowpacks driving these critical flows. There is therefore significant incentive to provide better estimates of these snowpacks and their physical processes through improved observations, analysis, and modelling.
Innovations in modelling, analysis, and observations have expanded predictive and observation capacity in unprecedented ways. Tremendous advances in all types of remote sensing platforms have expanded observation capabilities. For example, the rapid democratisation of remote sensing technology via UAVs have allowed individual researchers the capabilities to observe particular snow processes at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. Broad access to high performance computing resources through academic institutions and commercial vendors have enabled increased resolution, larger spatial and temporal coverage of numerical models, and improved representation of physical processes. The creation of massive datasets constitutes a challenge for the snow community and requires new developments to generate substantial scientific advances in the coming years.
In this session we invite contributions from the broader snow science community who are interested in observations, analysis, and/or models to share their experiences, insights, and new advances in utilizing these next-generation tools. Canada boasts impressive, but at times disconnected, snow science capabilities and we envision this session to be a forum to highlight and discuss areas of recent progress and collective gaps.
For more information and to submit an abstract, go to: https://meeting2021.cgu-ugc.ca/session-9/
‘Extreme’ drought in parts of Sask.: Ag Canada
Social Sharing
Amanda Marcotte
CBC News, May 10, 2021
CBC News and Dr. John Pomeroy address the drought and fire conditions in Southern Saskatchewan that have farmers and fire chiefs hoping for rain in an article here.