I am now in Saskatoon, the 'Paris of the Prairies', for the joint meeting of the Canadian Water Resources Association, the Canadian Geophysical Union, and the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanograhic Society. It's officially the 2013 Joint Scientific Congress and is the first time the three societies have met together. I think I heard that they were expecting 600-700 attendees.
As is customary I will summarize the highlights of the day. I will focus on the plenary speakers - a total of eight, two each day. It was pointed out to me by Sarah Boon that all eight are men. Not good for 2013, and in Canada, no less. Surprising.
Before today's plenaries, we had the usual introductions and comments from politicians. Nothing earth-shaking.
The first such person was the federal Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent.
Here are the highlights of Minister's remarks and speaking notes.
“Science is absolutely critical in ensuring Canadians make informed decisions for their health, safety, security and economic prosperity and for the protection of their environment,” said Minister Kent. “Environment Canada’s scientists, researchers, technicians and meteorologists play an important role in delivering timely, accurate and reliable weather, water and climate services to Canadians.”
If you were expecting comments of substance, guess again. I detected some skepticism about the Minister's glowing support of science.
He commented on collaboration with the US, especially on water quality (Great Lakes, most likely). He did note that Canada has the world's longest shoreline and the third greatest amount of freshwater in the world. Wonder if he counted groundwater? He did know about the oldest water (>1 billion years old), recently discovered in a mine near Timmins, Ontario. You go, Minister!
Next up was the Saskatchewan Minister of the Environment Ken Cheveldayoff. He
also serves as the Minister Responsible for the Water Security Agency and the Minister Responsible for the Saskatchewan Water Corporation and is on the Water Appeal Board. Probably not a lot of free time on his hands.
But he did have enough time to oversee development of the province's 25-year Water Security Plan, something that will seek to have enough water for economic growth, quality of life, and the environment. It will be reviewed every five years.
Last up was the Mayor of Saskatoon, Donald J. Atchison. He welcomed us to the city, told us to enjoy the sights, and noted that Saskatoon is Canada's fastest growing city with a population 'north of 250,000'. The Twitter site still says 224,000 so perhaps he meant the metropolitan area. You go, Saskatoon!
Today's quote is courtesy of the mayor.
Then came the plenary addresses.
First up was Howard Wheater, Canada Excellence Research Chair
in Water Security and Director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. He spoke on 'Water Security in Western Canada: Science and Management Challenges':
The talk will outline the multiple dimensions of water security and define a set of thematic challenges for science, policy and governance, drawing on a case study of the Saskatchewan River Basin (SRB) in western Canada. A science agenda will be defined, based on the development of the SRB as a
large scale observatory, to develop the underpinning science needed to improve our understanding of water futures under societal and environmental change. It will be argued that new integration is needed ofthe natural sciences, engineering and social sciences, that non-stationarity poses issues of decision-making under deep uncertainty, and that new approaches to decision support are needed. It will be proposed that vulnerability analysis can be combined with scenario-based modelling to address issues of water security, and that knowledge translation is an important element in framing water futures.
He spoke of the Saskatchewan River Basin research site (click on 'Research'). It covers the Rocky Mountains, boreal forest, prairies, and river delta. Issues in the SRB: 1) declining water quality - nutrients, especially phosphorus; 2) overallocation of the river in southern Alberta; 3) climate change and land use/land management changes in the Rocky Mountains; 4) floods and droughts - both expected to increase; and 5) fragmented and complex water governance.
That last one sounds familiar.
Wheater noted that policy and governance are major challenges. He emphasized more than just hydrology; social science aspects are very important.
The final plenary speaker was Ted Shepherd, a climate scientist from the University of Reading. He spoke on, 'Understanding Uncertainty in Climate Models: 'Robustness of the Atmospheric Circulation Response to Climate Change':
Although climate change is often characterised as “global warming”, the impact of climate change will vary greatly from region to region. Regional aspects of climate change are controlled by atmospheric circulation patterns, which moreover exhibit considerable chaotic variability. Model predictions of the atmospheric circulation response to climate change are in many cases highly uncertain, presumably because of systematic errors in the climate models (e.g. the location of the jet stream). The fact that these errors have stubbornly persisted despite increases in spatial resolution suggests that they are somehow linked to unresolved processes, whose effects need to be parameterised in the models. Thus, improving climate models requires a better understanding of multi-scale interactions. There are good reasons to believe that model bias, the divergence of model projections, and chaotic variability are somehow related. This talk will present some examples of these kinds of uncertainties and some potential ways forward.
I enjoyed this talk because I did not realize the uncertainties in atmospheric circulation were such a problem. Shepherd noted that to better understand regional impacts of climate change, more understanding of the dynamical aspects of climate change - nonlinearity and chaos - is necessary. He called for a probabilistic, risk-based approach. Imperfect models, limited observations: 'model-driven' and 'date driven' need to be fused.
Enjoyable morning, topped off by a 2+ hour lunch with Bernadette Conant, Executive
Director of the Canadian Water Network. Bernadette is a good friend and valued colleague. It was great seeing her and catching up. Nice chat about such things as water policy, misleading headlines and Twitter, etc.
Topped off by dinner with friend and colleague Bill Battaglin of the USGS and AWRA.
Then I wrote this.
Looking forward to tomorrow. Time to sleep now.
"If you don't finish #1, you're not a politician, you're a political activist." - Saskatoon Mayor Donald J. Atchison
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