Download Climate Data in the NWT

Climate Data in the NWT
Brian Sieben, Climate Change Adaptation Specialist
[email protected]
nwtclimatechange.ca
www.nwtclimatechange.ca
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Outline
NWT
Rationale
Devolution
Cliome Project
Inventory Project
Additional Climate Stations
PRISM www.nwtclimatechange.ca
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Northwest Territories (NWT)
• Population: 43,000 •11 Official Languages
• Land 1.2 million square km
• 33 communities, many small remote communities without all season roads
• in small communities, 50 % of protein derived from country foods
• Major industries: mining, oil & gas • All season highways link southern NWT to Alberta and BC, and northern NWT to Yukon
• 70 million hectares of forest land (172 million acres) www.nwtclimatechange.ca
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Rationale
‐ Climate change adaptation decision making requires climate data for both the historical record and scenarios of the future
‐ Need for climate data for land and resource management (devolution) April 1, 2014
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Devolution
‐ On April 1, 2014, the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) became responsible for managing public land, water, and resources. Other powers: health, education, transportation were previously devolved.
‐ Federal crown land, leases, federal employees, federal buildings transferred to GNWT
‐ New GNWT Department of Lands, resource reveue
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CLIOME (Ecosystem) Shift
2010‐2012
UAF: SNAP & Inst of Arctic Biology
LCCs
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Climate Change Scenario Projections are being generated for all NWT Communities by Dr. Fresco ‐UAF SNAP
Projections will be available early Fall 2014
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Climate Station Inventory Metadata Project
‐currently inventorying all stations: Government (Environment Canada, Fire Weather, Air Quality, Water Management, Road Weather) ‐research and industry stations
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Additional Climate Stations
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PRISM – methodology to produce spatial climate data sets developed by OSU*
precipitation, minimum temperature, maximum temperature , dew point & derived variables
SNAP – utilizes PRISM to downscale high resolution climate change scenarios
*Parameter‐elevation Relationships on Independent Slopes Model ‐ Daly et al. 2008 Int. J. Clim.
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‐ PRISM coverages (2 km and 800 m) exist for lower 48 states, BC, Alaska, Yukon ( 2 km) but NOT the NWT
‐ Lack of PRISM data for NWT prevents NWT full participation in the Arctic and NWB LCC projects
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With NWT PRISM coverages:
‐ SNAP could downscale climate change scenarios using the same methodology from Alaska, through, the Yukon and to NWT
‐ the domain of the LCC projects such as the IEM could be seamless from Alaska, through, the Yukon and to NWT
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Goal: ‐ generate PRISM climate coverages for NWT in the same format as the Yukon and Alaska.
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National Park Service (lead Pam Sousanes)
‐ Will generate 800 m PRISM coverages of temperature and precipitation for Alaska using a 1981 ‐2010 base period starting this Fall
‐ Two year completion period
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‐ It would be ideal to generate new 1981‐2010 800 m PRISM for NWT (and Yukon) at the same time as Alaska – economy of scale
‐ 800 m resolution useful in mountainous terrain
‐ Discussions with LCCs, SNAP, NPS, OSU regarding expanding Alaska SNAP project to Yukon and NWT including putting NWT climate data in Imiq
data base led by Jessica Cherry.
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NWT and Yukon Governments (&YC*) have had discussions regarding generating 1981‐2010 PRISM coverage's for Yukon and NWT and future downscaling
Challenges:
‐ Funding ‐ Lack of information on climate monitoring (NWT)
‐ Capacity at Oregon State University www.nwtclimatechange.ca
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Discussion
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