Program Co-ordinator: Daniel Caya (climate analyses) and René Roy (hydrological analyses)

Mandate

• Climate analysis and monitoring
• Analysis of regional model output
• Production of climate and hydrological scenarios, in co-operation with the Climate Scenarios group

Main objectives

• Verify model output and validate it against observations.
• Analyze climate variability, trends and extremes.
• Assess, modify or develop methods of designing climate and hydrological scenarios suited to the needs of Impacts and Adaptation projects.
• Quantify uncertainty throughout the production chain for scenarios of changes in the hydrological regime.

Secondary objectives

• Assess climate trends (observations, re-analyses, remote sensing).
• Assess impacts associated with meteorological events.
• Develop methods of assessing climate extremes.
• Analyze and verify data related to the cryosphere.
• Compare and suggest statistical downscaling methods.
• Ensure that hydrological modelling tools are adequate for purposes of studying climate change.
• Determine the consequences of climate change for the different components of the hydrological regime.
• Provide expertise and support in climate sciences for Impacts and Adaptation group projects.

Research projects

• Evaluation of the “weather typing” method as a statistical downscaling tool
• Analysis of the behaviour of observed precipitation, temperature and wind extremes and comparison with the distributions forecast by the CRCM across North America. The comparison with the current climate (1961-2000) will be used to define a downscaling relationship that can be used to characterize the expected behaviour of extremes in the future climate.
• Development of a list of past extreme events and their impacts on public health and safety and on infrastructure
• Analysis of the variability and changes in snow cover in Quebec in the second half of the 20th century
• Updating and adding new information on extreme events (archives and quasi-real time) for the CRIACC site
• Co-ordination and improvement of the Data Access Integration (DAI) gateway, which simplifies access to observations, re-analyses, CRCM data and statistical downscaling predictors
• Verification of the CRCM water budget
• Reconstruction of hydroclimatic conditions using paleoindicators – Phase II
• Nordic hydrological modelling
• Peat bog moisture regime