CH director Professor John Pomeroy and CH fellow Mike Demuth (Geological Survey of Canada) have contributed to an article in the National Post outlining ways in which the effects of climate-change may be felt across Canada. The piece considers likely changes in temperature, precipitation, glacial cover, water resources, distributions of vegetation and wildlife and some related socio-economic issues.

The article is available here. Please note that early versions misquoted Prof. Pomeroy: the related passage should read as follows;

The extra rain, for example, is unlikely to fall in a gentle spring shower. Look for it in great flooding downpours or winter rains that drain before they can nourish crops.

John Pomeroy, a Canada research chair in water resources at the University of Saskatchewan, points out the amount of water that falls as snow has already declined by one-third on the Prairies. The number of multi-day rains has increased by half.

“Farmers need to adapt to that, to being inundated and flooded quite a bit,” he said.

Two new videos describing CH science have been published, and are available for online viewing:

• Prairie Hydrology
• The Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory

More videos relating to our research are available here.

CH Director Professor John Pomeroy was asked by Canmore’s Rocky Mountain Outlook to comment on the warm and dry conditions seen this winter in Alberta’s southern mountains.

He said that while temperatures are running some 8°C above average and snowpack is below-normal, prospects for summer flows depend primarily on the weather to come through the spring. The current strong El Niño is largely to blame this year, but with average winter temperatures having risen 1.5° to 2°C since the early 1960s, these conditions may well become more commonplace in future decades.

The article (published 17th February 2016) is available for online viewing here.

CH director Professor John Pomeroy was asked by The Globe and Mail this week to comment on the likely influences of climate-change on winter outdoor pursuits in two strongly contrasting contexts.

For the first article (published on Sunday 31st January 2016), he was asked how risks associated with mountain snowpacks might alter with changing climatic conditions, following the loss of five snowmobilers’ lives in the BC Rocky Mountains as the result of an avalanche.

He responded that increasing minimum air temperatures should tend generally to result in more consolidated snowpacks, which in turn should be more stable. Warmer, wetter snow is also less likely to be transported by wind, to form cornices on the lees of ridges: sudden failure of such features is a common cause of avalanches. However, there are signs that winter weather patterns may be swinging more frequently between extremes of warm and cold: this will influence patterns and characteristics of precipitation, and alter snowpack metamorphic processes, thereby increasing the challenge of accurately forecasting avalanche risks.

The second (published on Wednesday 3rd February 2016) considered how warmer winter conditions are impacting the viability of outdoor rinks, and thus opportunities for shinny and other varieties of informal hockey. Dr Pomeroy’s prognosis was pessimistic, in view of increasing occurrences of warm temperatures and rainfall, and the corresponding unreliability of ground remaining frozen throughout the winter, in many areas of the country. (Those with an interest in this serious risk to one of the nation’s key icons of winter identity, not to mention its future hockey prospects, might also be interested in the RinkWatch project.)

The articles are available for online viewing here:

• Snowmobilers attempted to save friend who died in avalanche
  Justin Giovannetti, Mike Hager; Sunday 31st January 2016
• Balmy in February: When puddles replace rinks, we all lose
  Dave Bidini; Wednesday 3rd February 2016

Two PhD students at CH were awarded $1000 prizes for their two-minute ‘Flash Freeze’ pitches for the Cryosphere Innovation Award for Students at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Nik Aksamit focused on identifying the smallest eddies in alpine turbulence relevant to transporting snow, using a new Particle Tracking Velocimetry apparatus.

Phillip Harder proposed to improve precision farming systems through high-resolution mapping of snow using the system for acoustic sensing of snow (SAS3) mounted on UAVs.

CH Fellow Bob Sandford will be talking about his book Storm Warning: Water and Climate Security in a Changing World at Literary Lights, a celebration of local writers to be held at the Rose & Crown Pub, 749 Railway Avenue, Canmore at 7pm on Thursday 28th January 2016.

As many will already be well aware, Bob’s talks are always insightful and interesting, while managing to present the work of CH and related science in a highly approachable manner, and describing its wider relevance and importance to society.

The Western Producer published an article on 31st December 2015 citing CH research on changing prairie precipitation patterns.

The piece discussed how work in the Smith Creek Research Basin and elsewhere has demonstrated how rain is replacing snowfall in the spring and early fall, and established that the duration of rainstorms has increased over the past 70 years, despite no overall increase in total precipitation.

It is available for online viewing here.

CH Fellow Bob Sandford, who also serves as EPCOR Chair for the UN University Institute for Water and Health, has recently co-authored a new book considering the risks and impacts associated with anthropogenic climate-change.

Written in partnership with Dr Jon O’Riordan, the book – titled The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity in a Changing World – explores connectivities between the climate-related threats currently looming over each of these components of the natural and human environments.

Intended to provide an accessible synopsis of key related issues and possible mitigating responses, the book draws on research from CH, the Adaptation to Climate Change Team at Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies and other leading authorities on climate-related matters.

Sandford comments that the book “… explains the nexus of water, food, energy and biodiversity to show how critical the effect of changes of one are on the others. We hope to be able to demonstrate though, this is how we need to think differently about that nexus so that we can respond appropriately in terms of mitigating the impacts and adapting to the changing political structure”.

The Climate Nexus was profiled by both Vancouver’s Georgia Strait (here) and the Bow Valley’s Crag and Canyon (here) on 23rd December 2015: full publication details are available here.

CH’s Dr John Pomeroy has contributed to a one-hour special issue of Découverte, for the Radio Canada Channel.

Focusing on the vulnerability of Canadian water resources to climate-change, the program will include substantial discussion of CH’s research and the Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory.

It will air on the evening of Sunday 6th December 2015 at 6:30pm, and will subsequently be available through the program’s website.

CH’s Prof. John Pomeroy and Bob Sandford, together with James Bruce (a former assistant deputy minister at Environment Canada), have contributed an op-ed to the Globe and Mail outlining the increasingly parlous state of water quantity and quality in Canada.

The article makes a strong case for establishing a federally-led strategy which would enable Canada to “join the rest of the developed world by measuring, forecasting and managing its water to promote our prosperity, environmental health and quality of life and to address threats posed by climate change”.

The piece – published on 29th November 2015 – is available for online viewing here.