Grant: Alliance Grants

The goals of the proposed research project are to provide ENMAX Corporation with 1) an assessment of physical climate risks to the energy sector in southern Alberta, and 2) the knowledge to improve the capacity of their staff to use climate change data. The assessment of risk will rely on information from ENMAX and industry sources to determine the key climate hazards and critical thresholds and the consequences of exceeding them. The outcome will be an improved understanding of changes in the regional hydroclimate in support of the planned adaptation of industrial practices to minimize and manage physical climate risk. An innovative approach includes: - engaging ENMAX staff and key stakeholders in the evaluation of the impacts of climate-related hazards and to improve their understanding of climate change, - deriving climate projections for an array of variables from three scales of Regional Climate Model data, - undertaking research to examine uncertainties in the climate projections and to determine the extent to which the simulated changes are outside the range of natural hydroclimatic variability, and - investigating observed and simulated patterns of atmospheric moisture transport and linking shifts in climate dynamics to projected changes in hydroclimatic variability and extremes.