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Climate analysis and monitoring

The Climate Analysis and Monitoring theme is focused on providing reference climate data to users, understanding historical climate trends and variability, and placing recent seasonal behaviour in context with past climate normals for British Columbia. Accomplishing these goals relies on collaboration across all our themes, and with external partners.

The foundation of this work is the Provincial Climate Data Set (PCDS), a comprehensive set of historical, station-based weather and climate data for British Columbia. This archive, assembled at PCIC as part of the Climate Related Monitoring Program (CRMP), is continually updated under a data sharing agreement with our partners in various BC Ministries, BC Hydro, and Rio Tinto. It also includes observations from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

This extensive dataset has been used to develop detailed climatological maps of temperature and precipitation that may be applied in a wide range of contexts. Recently, our work has focused on updating these maps to the most recent climatological period, and implementing a version control system to improve data tracking in the PCDS. In addition, PCIC maintains a climate dataset similar to the PCDS for the Western Canadian Arctic.

Landscape photo of a beach

Objectives

  • Provincial Climate Data Set—update and maintain the database of station data. This includes implementation of near real-time data collection and taking steps to improve data quality and consistency across stations.
  • Fine-scale climatological mapping—create detailed climatological maps for British Columbia, showing maximum and minimum  temperature and precipitation over standard 30-year periods.
  • Ongoing weather analysis—assess extreme weather events as they occur and prepare annual and seasonal summaries of weather conditions. Visit the Climate Anomaly Viewer to learn more.

Key personnel