Predicting and interpolating Canada's future precipitation extremes across climate regions

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As Canada’s climate evolves, a better understanding of the patterns of precipitation extremes is critical. Engineers use charts that track the historic intensity, duration, and frequency of rainfall events to ensure their designs meet drainage standards. Frequently engineers use outdated weather station datasets that are geographically distant to their design projects. The Proponent created a tool that interpolates these charts, known as IDF curves, between weather stations for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO). The proposed research program expands and improves upon this work by confirming time trends in the historic data and extrapolating the results to build a climate change model for precipitation. The Proponent’s research will enable Canadian engineers to design infrastructure projects based on geographically-corrected precipitation patterns that will stay relevant for the entire design life of their projects, and improve scientific understanding of Canada’s regional climatological processes.