Variability and changes in high impact hydrometeorological events

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Climate change is an unavoidable global phenomenon that will strongly affect Canada. Over Arctic and subarctic regions of Canada, feedbacks associated with regional changes in sea-ice and snow cover will amplify anticipated surface warming, as observed over the last three decades in northern and northeastern Canada. These changes will also affect high impact weather events, locally and over remote southern regions, as those depend on these regional feedbacks that strongly interact with poleward heat transports through meteorological systems. Then, better projections of the changing meteorology (based on occurrence, duration and intensity of weather events) at regional scales are needed, as well as pertinent changes in joint climatic variables to improve our understanding on the coupling between local or regional-scale influences that interact with atmospheric circulation driven mechanisms. In fact, many of the key processes relevant to the simulation of single variables are understood, but studies are only starting to focus on developing projections of joint or combined variables, especially when extremes or variability in the individual quantities are concerned. In this context, the overall objective of the research program is to develop new knowledge on climate and weather extremes and hydro-meteorological hazards, and to improve society's ability to manage risks associated with future changes of these events. The proposed scientific approach will consist to 1) configure new Regional Climate Models' runs with various atmospheric and oceanic boundary conditions (from reanalysis, global climate models, and new sea surface temperatures and sea-ice products available at high resolution) over current and future periods, and 2) develop new diagnostic variables and multivariate criteria. The originality and innovative aspects of the proposed research will be to 1) improve our current understanding on the complex links between the large-scale atmospheric circulation variability and the changes in regional surface conditions and their effects on the occurrence of high impact storms and of extreme events over key Canadian areas, 2) define combined atmospheric variables based on their particular impacts on human health and natural or perturbed ecosystems, and 3) develop new and oriented regional scale scenarios of extremes and hydro-meteorological hazards, for their uses in adaptation strategies across Canada. The proposed research will contribute to train HQPs (3 Msc, 2 PhDs and 2 Post-Doctoral fellows) in order to support Canada's effort to understand how climate/weather extremes or hydro-meteorological hazards will affect Canada's human, socio-economic and natural systems. This will also help stakeholders and public institutions to develop early warning systems that could reduce injuries due to anticipated severe weather conditions, thus contributing to risk reduction.