Understanding climate aids business planning.

One critical issue for Saskatchewan businesses is the weather. From heading out on the highway for a meeting to long-range strategic planning, weather is frequently a factor. In fact, watching the weather is an ongoing preoccupation for industries ranging from agriculture and construction to energy and transportation.

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Understanding weather patterns and trends can play an important role in planning, but to identify these factors accurately it is necessary to work with weather data recorded over a long period of time. Interpreting this data makes it possible to define 'climate normals,' or what normal weather is for a given period. To determine what 'normal' is, daily high and low temperatures, rainfall and other measurements are compared to averages for a 30-year period.

By looking at average conditions and other driving factors such as El Nino conditions, it is possible to predict what weather is likely to be at a given time with some degree of accuracy.

Say a natural gas company is planning to lay a pipeline. By consulting climatologists, the company will be able to determine--with a fair degree of accuracy--not only probable temperatures during the project, but also the depth of the snow pack or how deep the ground is likely to be frozen at a given date in the spring or fall. This information will allow the company to identify a likely work season and help it schedule equipment and crews.

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How do we know what 'normal' weather is? Weather recording in Saskatchewan goes back more than 100 years. In Saskatoon, for example, the Northwest Mounted Police started recording temperatures in 1889. In 1916, the Physics Department of the University of Saskatchewan established a climatological station and continuous observations were recorded twice daily for about 50 years.

In the fall of 1963, Saskatoon's Climate Reference Station (CRS) was established. In 1992, the CRS began to be converted to an automated system. In 1993, it was able to use World Meteorological Organization standards for calculating normals because of its 30 years of continuous, high-quality data collection.

In the province, the CRS is classified as a principal climatological station that makes supplementary climatalogical observations. As a principal station, it takes hourly readings of elements including temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind and atmospheric pressure. Supplemental observations include rate of rainfall, soil temperature, grass temperature, bright sunshine and solar radiation.

This year, the CRS is celebrating 40 years of continuous operation, and when it comes to weather stations, the longer they operate the better they are. As a climatological reference station, its data is sufficient to be used to identify climatic trends.

Climatological information has assumed new importance as a result of social and environmental issues, in which climate is a dominant factor. Climate trends show very clearly that Saskatchewan's climate is warming up, but not uniformly. When we compare current data to historic norms, we see that:

* on average, our winter and spring are considerably warmer than they used to be, whereas the summer is only slightly warmer;

* nighttime temperatures are not as low as they once were; and

* maximum daily temperatures are similar to slightly higher, but minimum temperatures are not as low.

This kind of information can be useful to energy companies in predicting demand and planning supply. A warmer climate is also expected to trigger more extreme events, such as storms, floods and droughts, with significant implications for planning in agriculture, emergency measures, the insurance industry, natural resource management, and even health care.

Weather information has immediate uses, as well. When the City of Saskatoon was building the Preston Crossing overpass, for example, certain phases of the construction were very sensitive to precipitation. When a thunderstorm occurred during construction, radio reports based on measurements at the airport indicated light precipitation. Since the CRS collects rainfall amounts nearer the construction site, the foreman was able to use CRS data to get a more accurate rainfall reading and suspend construction.

With the availability of accurate weather information and the resources to develop a likely forecast, it makes sense to include climatic factors into project planning.

Virginia Wittrock is a Research Scientist at the Saskatchewan Research Council.