Improved Understanding, Diagnosis and Prediction of Earth System Change in Western Canada: The Achievements and Legacy of the Changing Cold Regions Network
Abstract
The interior of western Canada is at the forefront of rapid hydroclimatic change. The Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN; www.ccrnetwork.ca) was a Canadian research network (2013-18) that addressed global challenges facing cold regions by improving the understanding of past and ongoing changes in climate, land, vegetation, and water, and predicting their future responses, with a geographical focus on the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie River Basins. The network included 45 scientists from eight Canadian universities and four government agencies, as well as many international collaborators, and it developed important linkages with several international programs, principally WCRP GEWEX, NASA ABoVE, and NCAR. CCRN utilized a set of well-studied, instrumented research basin observatories to study process interactions and develop and test models. Its science goals were to:
- Document and evaluate observed Earth system change, including hydrological, ecological, cryospheric and atmospheric components over a range of scales from local observatories to biome and regional scales; - Improve understanding and diagnosis of local-scale change by developing new and integrative knowledge of Earth system processes, incorporating these processes into a suite of process-based integrative models, and using the models to better understand Earth system change; - Improve large-scale atmospheric and hydrological models for river basin-scale modelling and prediction to better account for the changing Earth system and its atmospheric feedbacks; and - Analyze and predict regional and large-scale variability and change, focusing on the governing factors for the observed trends and variability in large-scale aspects of the Earth system and their representation in current models, and the projections of regional scale effects of Earth system change on climate, land and water resources. This presentation reviews the scientific achievements made in CCRN, and highlights the observations and projections of Earth system change over the region. The insights, predictive tools, observational datasets, and improved understanding developed in CCRN represent a considerable advance that is guiding the development of water and climate observation and prediction systems in the new pan-Canadian Global Water Futures program.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.C43C1798D
- Keywords:
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- 0702 Permafrost;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0736 Snow;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0738 Ice;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY