Climatology

Services 

• We provide climatic impact assessments for the resource and environment sectors. This process involves assessing climatic factors which affect socioeconomic and ecological systems. 
• We develop climatic adaptation strategies for managing the effects of climatic variations. 
• We provide baseline climate information from our site in Saskatoon. (1963 - present).

Benefits

Our society, economy, and environment are vulnerable to the effects of drought, storms and other climatic hazards. Most of the costly, disruptive, and dangerous hazards in Canada are climate related.

Our work focuses on the assessment of these impacts and the development of strategies to reduce the negative results and to benefit from the positive results, of climatic variability. For example, our work estimates that the effects of a recent, massive drought, the one of 1988, caused a direct agricultural production loss of almost 2 billion dollars in Canada (Wheaton and Arthur 1989).

Other sectors were also hard hit; the indirect costs to the economy, society and the environment were very high. Saskatchewan was the hardest hit. Our work, and that of several others, indicates that the risk of future droughts will increase in frequency and severity with continued global warming. If strategies are developed to avert even 10% of the $1,800,000,000 cost, the savings would be in the range of $180,000,000 annually for Canada. This work is vital to all sectors of our economy, including agriculture, forestry, energy, water resources, tourism, and human health.

Links: 

• Publications, Scientific Journals and Book Chapters 
• Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative

Contacts:

Elaine Wheaton
Email: wheaton@src.sk.ca

Virginia Wittrock
Email: wittrock@src.sk.ca

Carol Beaulieu
Email: beaulieu@src.sk.ca