Possible impacts of climate change on extreme weather events at local scale in south–central Canada |
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| Authors: | Chad Shouquan Cheng Heather Auld Qian Li Guilong Li |
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| Institution: | 1. Science Section, Operations – Ontario Region, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment Canada, 4905 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3H 5T4, Canada
2. Adaptation and Impacts Research Section, Science and Technology Branch, Environment Canada, 4905 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3H 5T4, Canada
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| Abstract: | Synoptic weather typing and regression-based downscaling approaches have become popular in evaluating the impacts of climate change on a variety of environmental problems, particularly those involving extreme impacts. One of the reasons for the popularity of these approaches is their ability to categorize a complex set of meteorological variables into a coherent index, facilitating the projection of changes in frequency and intensity of future daily extreme weather events and/or their impacts. This paper illustrated the capability of the synoptic weather typing and regression methods to analyze climatic change impacts on a number of extreme weather events and environmental problems for south–central Canada, such as freezing rain, heavy rainfall, high-/low-streamflow events, air pollution, and human health. These statistical approaches are helpful in analyzing extreme events and projecting their impacts into the future through three major steps or analysis procedures: (1) historical simulation modeling to identify extreme weather events or their impacts, (2) statistical downscaling to provide station-scale future hourly/daily climate data, and (3) projecting changes in the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather events and their impacts under a changing climate. To realize these steps, it is first necessary to conceptualize the modeling of the meteorology, hydrology and impacts model variables of significance and to apply a number of linear/nonlinear regression techniques. Because the climate/weather validation process is critical, a formal model result verification process has been built into each of these three steps. With carefully chosen physically consistent and relevant variables, the results of the verification, based on historical observations of the outcome variables simulated by the models, show a very good agreement in all applications and extremes tested to date. Overall, the modeled results from climate change studies indicate that the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather events and their impacts are generally projected to significantly increase late this century over south–central Canada under a changing climate. The implications of these increases need be taken into consideration and integrated into policies and planning for adaptation strategies, including measures to incorporate climate change into engineering infrastructure design standards and disaster risk reduction measures. This paper briefly summarized these climate change research projects, focusing on the modeling methodologies and results, and attempted to use plain language to make the results more accessible and interesting to the broader informed audience. These research projects have been used to support decision-makers in south–central Canada when dealing with future extreme weather events under climate change. |
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