Impacts of Climate Change on Convective Storms in the Canadian Prairies using Numerical and Statistical Downscaling Techniques

Convective storms bring heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, and sometimes hail, posing significant risks to cities, farms, and infrastructure. These intense storms are especially common in Canada’s Prairies during the summer and are becoming more severe with climate change. To better predict these storms, we need detailed climate models because convective storms usually happen over small areas (between 10 to 100 kilometres across). However, the typical global climate models cover much larger areas (about 200 kilometres across), making it hard to accurately capture these storms. To solve this problem, this project improves the level of detail and accuracy of these models down to about 10 kilometres using advanced techniques. This improvement will help preserve essential characteristics of rainfall accurately in our predictions. By using multiple climate models, we can also understand how certain we are about these projections. This research is crucial for designing infrastructure in Canadian regions prone to flooding from convective storms, aiming to reduce the damage from these increasingly intense weather events.

Faculty Supervisor:

Simon Michael Papalexiou

Student:

Partner:

BGC Engineering Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Calgary

Program: