Hydrology and Water Security

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The potential impact of a changing climate on both quantity and quality of water resources is the highest risk faced by cold regions. Arctic river basin discharge is controlled by cold regions hydrological processes, which involve complex phase changes and so are very sensitive to biases in the driving meteorology. There is a growing need to find develop suitable, gridded, high-resolution, driving meteorology for physically realistic and sophisticated hydrological models that can provide the capability to assess hydrological responses to climate change as well as inform water forecasting and prediction efforts in the Polar Regions such as Canada.

Our core services for the Hydrology and Water sector include:

  • Weather monitoring and observation
  • High-resolution gridded historical climate data sets
  • Weather and climate estimation at ungauged sites
  • Improvement of sub-seasonal and seasonal flood and droughts Early Warning Systems
  • Hydrometeorological forecasting and model development
  • Statistical and dynamical downscaling of climate change scenarios data
  • Estimation of design storms and flows under climate change conditions
  • Estimation of Probable Maximum Precipitation
  • Computation of Probable Maximum Flood
  • High-resolution modelling of weather and climate extremes
  • Watershed water balance assessments
  • Large-scale hydrological and water management modelling