Summer Extreme Weather: Improving Climatologies, Prediction and Assessments of Future Climate

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My research program focuses on one of society's major challenges, dealing with summer extreme weather and its future change, that has profound impacts on society. Weather-related disasters and associated insurance payouts are on the rise across Canada with climate change being one likely reason. The overarching goal of the proposed research program is to improve our knowledge and prediction capabilities of warm season severe weather and how these events may change in a future climate. This work covers a range from daily short--duration storm events to future climate change variations in southern Canada, with a focus on deep convective tornadic storms.  Research objectives will be addressed to achieve the overarching goal: (1) To better understand Western Canada's tornado risk through analysis of current tornado statistics - an updated actual Canadian tornado climatology analysis is needed using the most current database; this research will address this need via collaborations with the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP; uwo.ca/ntp) and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), (2) Improve knowledge of tornadic events via analysis of historic events - analysis of past tornadic events will be conducted to better understand their synoptic and mesoscale environments; this will be done using all available meteorological and radar data, and targeted model simulations. Based on my operational and years of storm-chasing experience, I understand that the Canadian tornado environment can be different than U.S. events, and many U.S. Storm Prediction Centers' diagnostics are U.S.-specific and do not apply in Canada for all situations. The proposed research will address this in a quantitative way, 3) Ongoing collaborations with researchers and partners in Global Water Futures (GWF; https://gwf.usask.ca) is strictly focused on analysis of future (end of century) changes in southern Canada hail characteristics -- this is done using 4 km convection--allowing dynamically-downscaled climate simulations via collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The proposed NSERC work will use the NCAR simulations to examine future changes in tornadic storm environments. Two Masters and one PhD student will be dedicated to the objectives and work with collaborators. Ongoing collaboration with CatIQ and Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction will provide the insurance sector with state--of--the--art Canadian future severe weather and tornado projections through frequent consultations and meetings to ensure our information are tailored for their use. Collaborations within GWF will provide these results to other weather and climate sensitive sectors as well. Ongoing collaboration with ECCC will continue to contribute to improved knowledge and prediction of Canadian tornadic storms. This research will therefore result in benefits to the insurance, power, agriculture and public safety sectors who depend on weather and climate predictions.