CBC’s documentary program The Nature of Things has produced an episode called Chasing Snowflakes, which features The Centre for Hydrology’s research in the Canadian Rockies: it will air on Thursday, Nov. 13^th at 8pm on CBC TV local channels.

More information is available on the epoisode’s web-page, here.

Professor John Pomeroy has been invited to chair sessions and present at the UNESCO International Workshop on Climate Change Impacts on Snow, Glacier and Water Resources: Multidisciplinary Network for Adaptation Strategies (www) to be held 6-7 November at the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change in Koblenz, Germany.

Pomeroy’s talk will be on Alpine snow hydrology and the International Network for Alpine Research Catchment Hydrology – water towers for the world. The talk will outline the activities of a new collaborative research network led by Pomeroy, INARCH – the International Network for Alpine Research Catchment Hydrology.

Research contributing to INARCH is taking place in the Americas, Europe and Asia and is demonstrating the tremendous sensitivity of alpine water supplies to climate warming. By better observations and modelling of mountain snowpacks and their melt, INARCH hopes to identify the most vulnerable mountain snowpacks and the implications of their loss for downstream water supplies.

The Workshop will inform UN climate change policy and the International Hydrological Programme activities relating to sustainable water supply. The UN’s overall aim for the Workshop is to connect scientific research, policy development and action, and identify recommendations to enhance the interface between science and policy to develop sustainable adaptation strategies.

The University of Saskatchewan Centre for Hydrology has contributed two chapters to Global Chorus, a collection of 365 perspectives on the environmental future of the planet.

John Pomeroy, director and Bob Sandford, fellow have written contributions on climate change and hydrology that are frank assessments of the challenges imposed by excessive greenhouse gases and the global water crisis from the perspective of research in western Canada and elsewhere.

Contributors to the book are from around the world and include Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jane Goodall, John Ralston Saul, Farley Mowat and many others. Global Chorus is being published this month by Rocky Mountain Books: more details are available at http://globalchorus.ca

Author Ed Struzik has written an article on the loss of snow and glaciers in the Canadian Rockies and how this threatens water resources in Western Canada. The article highlights some research results from the Centre for Hydrology and allied researchers in western Canada. It is available online here.

Research at the Fortress Mountain Snow Laboratory of the Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory was highlighted in a recent article in the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

The article described a day in the field with Dr Jonathan Conway, Postdoctoral Fellow with the Centre for Hydrology and his field research on the energetics of mountain snowmelt. Dr Conway’s postdoctoral research, which is supervised by Dr Warren Helgason of the Dept of Civil and Geological Engineering and Dr John Pomeroy, will advance our understanding of turbulent and radiative transfer to alpine snowpacks and glaciers. The Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory, funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, is now almost completely installed.