Enviro-BC Weather Forecasting Services

Lets say for example that I work for the CIA or some other US agency that wants to use chemtrails to experiment on the populace. Would I want my handiwork to be all over the sky so everyone could see it. If I was in charge of this program, I would target days to release chemicals on overcast low or middle cloud days when no one would suspect what I was doing. Just think what I could accomplish in Vancouver…wouldn’t be long before everyone would be sick or dying.

Second point – if there is even a scrap of evidence that chemicals are being released, has anyone sued the government to get a settlement? Can’t sue the government, find out which company is supplying the chemicals and sue them. Seems to me there could be class action suit here.

I have been a meteorologist for close to 40 years. I was a weather observer early in my career and spent a lot of time looking at the sky. On some days, low rh I assume, the vapour trail would disappear in seconds. On other days there was a long line behind the jet that would start to fan out. There were definitely some days, high rh I suspect, when the sky would be filled by contrails turned into cirrus clouds from passing jets, shredded and blown around by the upper winds. I don’t see any difference in the way contrails behave these days.

In an attempt to lure more visitors to the garden city, Tourism Victoria http://www.tourismvictoria.com/sunshine has a refund policy during the month of April. If it rains more than 12.5 millimetres on any day, the visitor is refunded $500 from what they have spent on accommodation.

This would seem like a safe bet as April is one of the driest months of the year  in Victoria and there just aren’t many wet days. It was over six years ago that more than 12.5 millimetres was recorded.

Unfortunately, on the first day of the promotion i.e. April 1st, Victoria Airport measured 16.2 millimetres. I would be interested to know how many people are going to be conpensated.

U.S. President Barack Obama will host a summit of world leaders in April to help forge a UN agreement on global warming, the White House said Saturday.

The April 27-28 summit, labelled by the White House as the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, will include 16 major economies.

The White House said in a statement the Washington summit “will facilitate a candid dialogue among key developed and developing countries, [and] help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome at the UN climate change negotiations.”

World leaders will meet in Copenhagen in December in an effort to produce a UN treaty on climate change to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

Canada is among the countries invited to the forum. Environment Minister Jim Prentice has said Canada’s environmental policies will mirror those of the Obama administration.

The Conservatives have said they plan to lower greenhouse gases by three per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, or 20 per cent from 2006 levels over that same period.

Obama has established a similar goal of reducing greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.

The Kyoto protocol, in contrast, sets out an agenda for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 per cent from 1990 levels, although “economies in transition,” like Russia, can pick different base years. Canada had initially signed on, but the Harper government abandoned its targets in 2006.

Talks to focus on clean energy, emissions

The U.S., which initially signed on to the 1997 Kyoto accord, later backed out under the presidency of George W. Bush. Obama has signalled he is ready for a shift in U.S. environmental policy, prioritizing clean energy and slashing greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade program.

April’s meeting will focus on these two priorities, the White House said.

The announcement came as millions around the world turned off their lights Saturday to mark Earth Hour, and a day before 190 countries are set to meet in Germany to lay some of the groundwork for the Copenhagen summit.

The following countries will be invited to the April forum: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Denmark, host of December’s Copenhagen summit, and the United Nations have also been invited.

As I look out my office window towards the Fly Hills, snow flurries are once again obscuring the ridges this morning. Winter seems to have booked an extended holiday in the Shuswap this year. There was a lot of snow the previous winter but at least it had the decency to all melt by mid March. The first day of Spring has just passed and there is still over 40 centimetres of the hard crusted white (closer to grey) stuff at the airport weather station!

It was actually a late start to winter. Temperatures remained rather warm throughout November, almost three degrees above normal. There was a meagre six centimetres of snowfall during the month, only two of which managed to settle on the ground. The above normal temperatures and lack of snow persisted until almost the middle of December. You may recall that I did a column about the anxiety that this was causing skiers and boarders who were looking up at mostly bare slopes.

On December 12th, the unseasonably mild conditions came to an abrupt end as very cold Arctic air invaded from the north. In the next few days, over 25 centimetres of snow fell and temperatures plummeted over 20 degrees to reach minus 24 on the 16th. Periods of snow until the end of the month brought the total up to 87 centimetres, over 20 above average.

In January, the month started and ended cold and snowy. Milder but cloudy and dull weather persisted through the middle part of the month. The 41 centimetres measured on the 4th is the most snowfall for any day at the airport going back to 1982 when records began? The storm brought the snow depth up to 72 centimetres, the highest of the winter. All tolled, temperatures averaged a degree below normal during the month and snowfall was about 20 centimetres above normal.

There wasn’t much letup in the cold weather throughout February. Temperatures did manage to climb a few degrees above the freezing mark on a fair number of days but the cold readings at night preserved the snow pack at around 60 centimetres (two feet) all month. The average temperature was over two degrees below normal and once again, freshly measured snowfalls were well above normal.

Another blast of Arctic air in the second week of March brought the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the Shuswap for so late in the winter season. The minus 21 minimum on the 11th, beat the old monthly record by over two degrees. So far in March, there hasn’t been much new snow but with daytime temperatures still not rising to double digits, we can’t seem to get rid of the old snow base.

So when will warmer Spring-like weather arrive? We should see some improvement soon if Environment Canada’s predictions are accurate. Near normal temperatures are forecast for the rest of March through May. Any day now we just might get past ten degrees!

In the summer of 1998, there was a devasting wildfire that threatened the city of Salmon Arm, BC. The fire raced downhill from the Fly Hills across the Salmon River valley and up to the top of Mount Ida. The picture I took this morning, over ten years later, still shows the blackened tree trunks. The contrast with the snow makes it easier to see the damage in winter. By spring, with the greening of grass and undergrowth, it is less noticable.

The other day I was down at the Salmon Arm pier and took some pictures of the rime or hoar frost as some people call it. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of rime – ‘Hard rime is a white ice that forms when the water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects. It is often seen on trees atop mountains and ridges in winter, when low-hanging clouds cause freezing fog’.
It isn’t just in the mountains though, it can form on any object as long as the temperature is below freezing and there is sufficient moisture available.

Borrowing from a Clint Eastwood movie, weather forecasts can be lumped into three categories – the good, the bad and the just plain ugly! In spite of advancements in computer modeling, satellite and radar imagery, there are still some days when forecasters end up crawling home with their tails firmly between their legs.

I like to think that there are more good forecasts than bad. Of course, some days it is easy to get it right. In the middle of summer under a strong ridge of high pressure, a forecast of sunny and hot has a very high chance of being successful. Sometimes a week or more goes by with very little change in the weather pattern so using ‘persistence’ works well. The basic principle here is that the best forecast is to continue predicting what is currently happening. Not rocket science.

Another method of forecasting is to use the climatology of a location to assess the limits of what is possible. For example, knowing that it has never been colder that minus 5 in June in Salmon Arm, would indicate to you that the probability is very low of this ever happening. Not impossible but highly unlikely. Using climatology for prediction works best when the weather is close to average but not effective in extreme situations. The forecasts are usually good but can be bad or rarely ugly if there is too much reliance on climatological statistics.

The big challenge to a forecaster is during changing situations. This is when most forecasts can go into the ugly category. A recent example of this is the snowstorm on January 5^th.  A classic winter pattern was beginning to evolve the day before. The computer models were showing moisture from an approaching Pacific warm front on a track to mix with a cold Arctic air mass over the interior. Alarm bells go off for lots of snow.

On Sunday, Environment Canada issued snow warnings for the entire Southern Interior. The forecast was for 10 to 15 centimetres. By Monday morning, the shovels, snow blowers and maintenance vehicles were plentiful in the Shuswap, dealing with around 30 centimetres of the back breaking white stuff. However our neighbours to the west at Kamloops were having a lazy morning with only a dusting of new snow on the ground.

So which is the worse forecast? Twice as much as predicted or almost none at all? Depends on your point of view. If you operate a snow removal service and had equipment and workers on standby, then the Kamloops forecast could be deemed ugly. But maybe people in the Shuswap would think 30 centimetres of snow in one night is ugly no matter what the forecast said!

It is impossible, especially in the mountainous terrain in BC to get every forecast right. Experienced forecasters have a better chance of success using their knowledge of past events along with scientific reasoning but there are still going to be those ugly days for many years to come.

I was pleased to see a reference in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, to the issue of climate change. A couple of his quotes – “the ways in which we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet”; and “the country cannot consume the world’s resources without regard to effect”, show that the impact of climate change is one of his priorities. 

He would also like to work with other countries to “roll back the specter of a warming planet”.  His appointment of Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, shows that he is serious about his promise to “restore science to its rightful place”  This is an about face to the Bush administration’s approach which ignored or questioned the massive scientific evidence of climate change.

Obama has pledged to support alternative energy projects to “harness the sun and winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories”. These initiatives will run into billions of dollars though and with the current financial downturn, skeptics are saying that it is just too costly at this time. However Obama is convinced that the short term benefits of job creation will stimulate the economy and help America escape an extended recession. He also envisions the nation achieving energy self sufficiency at some point in the future, another cost benefit.

So how does Canada fit into Obama’s bold new venture? At the recent meeting between Harper and Obama in Ottawa, climate change was at or near the top of the list of issues. The control of greenhouse emissions in both countries has been dismal in the past, lagging far behind most other countries in the world. There has been mounting pressure for them to do something about this. Hopefully the meeting will be the first step towards the two nations finally facing the consequences of climate change.

An energy initiative that doesn’t fit too well with this move towards renewable energy development and reducing greenhouse gases is the tar-sands project in northern Alberta. The estimate of close to two trillion barrels of oil in the sands, make it the largest petroleum reserve in the world.

Unfortunately the extraction of oil pours three times the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as standard drilling, a significant proportion of the total emissions of greenhouse gases produced in the entire country. Also there are adverse effects on sensitive ecosystems in the area. Since Canada currently sells around ten percent of this oil to our southern neighbours, expect reductions or eliminations of this export if the US gets serious about cutting emissions.

The Climate Action Network, an international group of over 450 non-governmental organizations, recently awarded Canada with the ‘Colossal Fossil’, judging the country as the worst in the world at ‘blocking progress towards science-based targets’. We have a long way to go to change this image

Prime Minister Harper has stated his intention to co-ordinate with US policies as part of a North American climate change accord. Time will tell whether he follows through with this plan.

It was great to see some new snow in the mountains this morning. The storm track has been noticably absent through southern BC the past few weeks. The few weak systems that have moved inland only deposited a few centimetres of snow. The current weather pattern, moisture moving into the interior from an upper low off the coast, looks promising for more snow over the next couple of days.

For some time now, I have wanted a web site that was interactive, where I could exchange ideas with people on a whole range of weather subjects.  The site was also badly in need of some updating. I still have some tweaking to do and I would appreciate comments about the new look and any suggestions on how to improve it.

Thanks to Clint at Ingenius Webdesign in Vernon for all his work on the site!