Uncategorized

Newsletter Available: Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN)

-CCRN is a CliC endorsed project.

1The Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN) released its first newsletter in December 2014.

CCRN is a new collaborative research network bringing together the unique expertise of a team of over 50 university and government scientists, including 36 Canadian scientists representing 4 government agencies and 8 universities, as well as 15 international scientists.  The network is funded for 5 years through the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research (CCAR) Initiative of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

CCRN’s objectives are to integrate existing and new sources of data with improved predictive and observational tools to understand, diagnose and predict interactions amongst the cryospheric, ecological, hydrological, and climatic components of the changing Earth system at multiple scales, with a geographic focus on Western Canada’s rapidly changing cold interior.

In December, CCRN submitted their 2nd Annual Science and Progress report to NSERC. The first year of CCRN was very much taken up with recruitment, turning a project proposal into a detailed work plan etc. Their 2nd Annual General meeting, at Wilfrid Laurier University in October 2014, showed that an impressive amount of work is now underway.

A few highlights from CCRN….

Continue ReadingNewsletter Available: Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN)

Science Feature: ESA-CliC North Hydrolgy Final Report

1-NorthHydrologyFunded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the main goal of the Support to Science Element (STSE) North Hydrology project was to support international efforts coordinated by the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) to exploit the use of Earth Observation (EO) technology, numerical models and in situ data in order to improve predictions from atmospheric and hydrological models in high-latitude regions. These are regions where ice and snow play a significant role in energy and mass exchange with the overlying atmosphere, and also where rivers are prone to the formation of ice jams and subsequent flooding. To attain this goal, a portfolio of EO products was developed based on the use of data from ESA (ERS-1/2 and ENVISAT) and non-ESA satellite missions (NASA Aqua/Terra, RADARSAT, TerraSAR-X) to respond to the scientific requirements of the CliC community and the operational requirements of the weather and climate operational agencies (regional to global scale), and the requirements of the operational user community to better characterize river-ice (and glacier temporary lakes) dynamics at the basin scale. In addition, the project aimed to: 1) reinforce the long-term strategic partnerships of ESA with the WCRP and the CliC community; 2) foster the use of ESA data within the CliC community for northern hydrological processes studies; 3) foster the operational use of the ESA-based developed products; and 4) foster the scientific return of ESA missions in terms of novel scientific results and publications.

Led by the University of Waterloo (Canada), in collaboration with seven partner institutions (ENVEO, the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), INRS - Centre Eau Terre Environnement, the Norwegian Computing Center (NR), the Northern Research Institute Trømso (NORUT), and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI)), the project generated several EO products and demonstrated their utilization in process-related and modeling studies. Key project achievements include: 1) development and validation of EO-derived lake and river ice, lake surface water/ice temperature (LSWT), and ice flow dynamics products; 2) demonstration of improvements in numerical weather prediction (NWP) with the HIgh Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM) used operationally at FMI through assimilation of EO-derived LSWT; 3) demonstration of the value EO-derived LSWT for assessing LSWT generated from regional climate model (RCM) coupled (RCA4-FLake) simulations at SMHI; and 4) documentation of a significant decrease in fraction of grounded ice in shallow lakes of the North Slope of Alaska from the analysis of a 20-year time series (1992-2011) of ERS-1/2 data.

In addition to EO products development, NWP experiments, RCM assessment and publications (listed below), the project produced a list of recommendations (roadmap) for future developments of EO-based products in light of recent and upcoming ESA Sentinel missions and the needs expressed by the atmospheric/hydrological modeling community, and the WCRP CliC project.

Download the full report

Publications:

Continue ReadingScience Feature: ESA-CliC North Hydrolgy Final Report