Case studies

Climate Change

Incorporation of climate change information and its future impacts required the generation of future climate change scenarios for the park. These scenarios were informed by data from global circulation models of the atmosphere-ocean system, which incorporates a range of future greenhouse gas emissions.

A set of five climate variables were used for the impact assessment. These included: temperature; precipitation; soil moisture; wind speed; and snow water equivalent (e.g., snowpack). These variables were chosen because information on them is widely available in circulation models and thought to have a large role in ecosystem function and human activities relevant to the park. All data was extracted using tools provided by the Canadian Climate Impacts and Scenarios project website. Inputs included a central location within Mt. Assiniboine Park, seasonal and annual time periods, and the main suite of greenhouse gas emission scenarios from the IPCC. The results provided a range of predictions (wherein larger ranges reflect greater uncertainty) on each climate variable in light of potential trends.

The resulting data was plotted graphically to illustrate the range of predictions and potential changes to scenarios for each variable. These are summarized very generally in Table 1: