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Item Development of freshwater hazard indicators to assess climate change impacts to salmon(Pacific Climate Impacts Constortium (PCIC), 2024) Schnorbus, Markus A.; Schoeneberg (Werner), Arelia T.; Tai, Travis C.; Larabi, Samah; Zeman, LeeThis report details the Development of Freshwater Hazard Indicators to Assess Climate Change Impacts to Salmon.Item Pacific Region VICGL - DynWat Model Deployment(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), 2024) Schnorbus, Markus A.This report details the development of the VIC-GL - DynWat Model.Item Raven model deployment to select salmon watersheds(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, 2023) Schoeneberg (Werner), Arelia T.; Larabi, Samah; Schnorbus, Markus A.This report details Raven Model Deployment to Select Salmon Watersheds.Item Weather to run: Building climate data infrastructure for science and society(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), 2026-01-14) Hiebert, JamesBritish Columbia’s climate varies dramatically over short distances, from coastal rainforests to inland fjords and glaciated alpine terrain. Capturing that variability requires more than static datasets: it demands continuous, high-resolution climate monitoring supported by robust data infrastructure. This talk describes the Provincial Climate Data Set (PCDS)–a product of PCIC and BC’s Climate Related Monitoring Program–as a living, relational database designed to ingest near-real-time observations from many official and operational sources, manage evolving metadata, and track revisions to observations and metadata over time. Using a simple and relatable use case—the percentage of “runnable” days per year defined by temperature and precipitation thresholds–this talk demonstrates how structured, provenance-aware climate data enable reproducible analysis across stations, regions, and decades. The example illustrates why relational data models, change tracking, and sustained technical investment are essential for trustworthy climate services. While the case study is grounded in everyday experience, the underlying message is serious: decisions affecting safety, infrastructure, and livelihoods rely on climate data that can accommodate variability, uncertainty, and change.Item PCIC Update: December 2025(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, 2025-12-22) Pacific Climate Impacts ConsortiumThis issue of the PCIC Update includes the following stories: - BC Risk and Resilience Assessment Released - Continued Outreach to Small, Rural and Remote BC Communities - ClimateData.ca Version 2 Launched - New PCIC Corporate Report Released - PCIC Science Brief on Potential Changes to Internal Climate Variability - Website Launch - Staff profile: Ed Beard - The Pacific climate seminar series - PCIC staff news - PublicationsItem Anthropogenic influence on altitudinally amplified temperature change in the Tibetan Plateau(IOP Science, 2024) Sun, Ying; Hu, Ting; Zhang, XuebinAs the highest plateau on the Earth, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has experienced rapid warming in the last decades, affecting natural ecosystem and water resources extending far beyond the plateau itself. A distinctive characteristic known as elevation-dependent warming (EDW) in the high mountain regions was particularly pronounced in the TP, whereby the magnitude of temperature warming was amplified with increasing altitudes. Different mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, however, the link between the root cause of warming, human activities, and the EDW remains poorly understood. Here we used the homogenized observation and simulations by the newest climate models to discern human influence on both mean and extreme temperatures within the region. An optimal fingerprinting method was applied in a vertical space rather than in traditional horizontal space. We found that the long-term trends in mean and extreme temperature amplified with increasing elevation, with larger magnitude of trends at higher elevations. The response to external forcing, primarily driven by human activities, was robustly detected in altitudinal amplification of temperature increase, providing clear evidence of human causes of EDW. As warming increases, the EDW in the region will continue, with more pronounced EDW corresponding to larger magnitude of warming under a high emission scenario. These findings mark the first evidence of human influence on temperature across different vertical altitudes of climate system.Item Do meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological indicators all point to an increased frequency and intensity of droughts across Canada under a changing climate?(Atmosphere-Ocean, 2025) Bonsal, Barrie; Tam, Benita; Zhang, Xuebin; Li, Guilong; Philps, Lisa; Rong, RobinDroughts, one of the most significant natural hazards, are complex in nature with varying definitions typically tailored to the timing and/or duration of the episode along with associated impacts. Although previous investigations have assessed future drought occurrence across Canada, none have comprehensively and collectively assessed changes to meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological drought indicators using CMIP6 GCM projections. The main objective of this study was to assess future drought conditions across Canada at various temporal scales using standardized indices representing meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts under multiple shared socio-economic pathways for the near (2041–2060) and far (2081–2100) future. On an annual basis, projected changes to all three drought indicators signify increased drying across the Prairies, portions of interior British Columbia, and most of Ontario. This drying is greater and covers more of the country during the warm season (April to September), while in summer and to a lesser extent autumn, widespread changes are only projected for meteorological and agricultural indicators. In spring, increased dry conditions are only prevalent in meteorological and hydrological indices. The cold season of October to March essentially shows little to no drying in any type of drought. Changes in all drought indices are amplified for higher SSPs and during the late century. This study improves an understanding of the spatial and temporal variations in projected changes to various drought types across Canada in response to human-induced warming. While results from this analysis are applicable for nation-wide drought assessments and drought management plans, they are less suitable for application at local scales where more detailed modelling may be required.Item Mapping of historical design values and their future-projected changes over Canada(New Horizons in Green Civil Engineering (NHICE), 2022-04-27) Curry, Charles L.; Annau, Nicolaas J.; Zwiers, Francis W.; Anslow, Faron; Glover, Rod; Hiebert, JamesClimate change has the potential to affect buildings and infrastructure by changing the conditions to which they are exposed. To better quantify and prepare for these changes, Infrastructure Canada and the National Research Council (NRC) recently supported a collaboration between the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC) and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to develop updated guidance to the engineering community. One facet of this work was the provision of standard climatic design values based on up-to-date historical observations at meteorological stations. Climatic data for infrastructure design are often required at locations not co-located with stations, necessitating some sort of interpolation. Purely mathematical or statistical interpolation tends to oversmooth spatial structure in station-poor areas and, depending on the technique, can exaggerate station measurement error in station-rich areas. Nor is physical consistency of the underlying climatic field in space guaranteed. We developed an approach that uses historical regional climate model (RCM) simulations as a spatial interpolator of station observations. RCMs can adequately reproduce the observed spatial patterns and probability distributions of many climate variables, with the benefit of spatiotemporal consistency—albeit in a "model world" and at spatial scales resolved by the RCM. The mapping method has been implemented as an online tool (the Design Value Explorer, or DVE) for general users to explore design value variations across Canada. The seamless transition from historical to future climate states in the RCM further allows the tool to provide projected changes to design values indexed to different levels of global warming. In this short paper, we review the development of the Design Value Explorer online tool, and showcase its main features.Item PCIC Corporate Report 2024-2025(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), 2025) Pacific Climate Impacts ConsortiumThe Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium's Corporate Report for 2024-2025.Item Improved optimal fingerprinting based on estimating equations reaffirms anthropogenic effect on global warming(2025) Li, Yan; Wang, Tianying; Yan, Jun; Zhang, XuebinThe optimal fingerprinting approach is central to detecting and attributing climate change. It utilizes a regression model with covariates that have measurement errors, linked by a shared covariance matrix with the regression error up to a known scale. The inferences about the regression coefficients are vital for making reliable detection and attribution statements, as well as for quantifying uncertainties in outcomes like attributable warming. Traditionally, this has involved the total least squares (TLS) method, which depends on accurately estimating the covariance matrix of the regression error. However, inaccuracies in this matrix’s estimation can lead to skewed scaling factor estimators and overly optimistic confidence intervals, potentially misrepresenting the accuracy of detection and attribution statements. The recent advent of an estimating equations approach, which offers more efficient point estimation with smaller possible variance and precise uncertainty quantification, prompts a critical reassessment of past climate change detection and attribution analyses. By applying this advanced method to HadCRUT5 observational data and CMIP6 multimodel simulations, our study reevaluates temperature detection and attribution at global and regional levels, strengthens the existing detection and attribution conclusions at the global scale, and provides evidence of the effect of anthropogenic forcings in various regions.Item Should we think of observationally constrained multidecade climate projections as predictions?(Science Advances, 2025) Li, Tong; Zwiers, Francis W.; Zhang, XuebinEmpirical evidence indicates that the range of model-projected future warming can be successfully narrowed by conditioning the projected warming on past observed warming. We demonstrate that warming projections conditioned on the entire instrumental annual surface temperature record are of sufficiently high quality and should be considered as long-term predictions rather than merely as projections. We support this view by considering the skill of predicted 20- and 50-year lead temperature changes under the Shared Economic Pathway (SSP)1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5 emission scenarios in climates of different sensitivities. Using climate model simulations, we show that adjusting raw multimodel projections of future warming with the Kriging for Climate Change (KCC) method eliminates most biases and reduces the uncertainty of warming projections irrespective of the sensitivity of the climate being considered. Simpler methods, or using only the more recent part of the temperature record, provide less effective constraints. The high-skill future warming predictions obtained via KCC have a serious place in informing global climate policies.Item Land temperature and hydrological conditions over B.C. in 2024(Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 2025) Curry, Charles L.; Lang, Kristyn; Dah, Abigail2024 was the second warmest year since 1940 in B.C., exceeded only by record warm temperatures in 2023. Snowpack increased from well below-normal to below-normal through the early winter, decreasing again to well below-normal by late spring. Compared to 2023 drought conditions were less severe overall; however, basins in the Northeast continued to experience extreme drought. The annual mean temperature in B.C. is increasing and can be distinguished from natural variability over the analyzed period of 1940-2024. Annual precipitation, however, exhibits no significant province-wide trend over that period.Item Land temperature and hydrological conditions over B.C. in 2023(Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 2024) Curry, Charles L.; Lang, KristynIn 2023, B.C. experienced record warm annual, summer and fall temperatures and well below-normal annual precipitation. Snowpack was generally below-normal through the winter, rapidly decreasing to well below-normal by June 1st due to early snowmelt across the province. In late summer and fall, severe drought conditions were experienced nearly everywhere in B.C., coinciding with record warm temperatures and below-normal precipitation. The trend in annual mean temperature in B.C. is positive and can be distinguished from natural variability over the analyzed period, 1950-2023. Annual precipitation, however, exhibits no significant trend over that period.Item Constraining the entire Earth system projections for more reliable climate change adaptation planning(Science Advances, 2025) Li, Chao; Zwiers, Francis W.; Zhang, Xuebin; Fischer, Erich M.; Du, Fujun; Liu, Jieyu; Wang, Jianyu; Liang, Yongxiao; Li, Tong; Yuan, LinaThe warming climate is creating increased levels of climate risk because of changes to the hazards to which human and natural systems are exposed. Projections of how those hazards will change are affected by uncertainties in the climate sensitivity of climate models, among other factors. While the level-of-global-warming approach can circumvent model climate sensitivity uncertainties in some applications, practitioners faced with specific adaptation responsibilities often find such projections difficult to use because they generally require time-oriented information. Earth system projections following specified emissions scenarios can, however, be constrained by applying the level-of-global-warming approach to observationally constrained warming projections to yield more reliable time-oriented projections for adaption planning and implementation. This approach also allows individual groups to produce consistent and comparable assessments of multifaceted climate impacts and causal mechanisms, thereby benefiting climate assessments at national and international levels that provide the science basis for adaptation action.Item PCIC science brief: Projected changes in short-term climate variability induced by human activities(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), 2025-08) Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)Internal climate variability occurs due to interactions between the parts of the Earth’s climate system and is an indelible feature of both observed and model-simulated climate . Anthropogenic climate change may alter the internal variability of the climate system which could, in turn, influence both the mean climate and extremes. Writing in the Journal of Climate, Coquereau and colleagues (2024) used global climate model simulations to examine how internal climate variability might change as the planet warms. In their article titled, “Anthropogenic Changes in Interannual-to-Decadal Climate Variability in CMIP6 Multiensemble Simulations,” the authors noted two regions in particular where changes in climate variability are manifested in future. The first is a decrease in temperature variability at higher latitudes, associated with the retreat of sea ice and the moderation of air temperature by the now exposed ocean surface. The second is an increase in the short-term variability of temperature and precipitation at low latitudes, which appears to reflect an increase in the frequency of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. This Science Brief discusses these findings and what they might mean for the future climate in British Columbia.Item PCIC update: June 2025(Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), 2025) Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC)This issue of the PCIC Update contains stories about temperature anomalies, an update on the Pacific Climate Seminar Series, staff changes at PCICI. and PCIC's most recent publications. The most recent staff profile is on Dr. Tong Li.Item The Washington-British Columbia transboundary climate-connectivity project: Climate impacts and adaptation actions for wildlife habitat connectivity in the transboundary region of Washington and British Columbia(Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington, 2016) Krosby, M.; Michalak, J.; Robbins, T. O.; Morgan, H.; Norheim, R.; Mauger, G.; Murdock, Trevor Q.Item Change point detection of flood events using a functional data framework(Advances in Water Resources, 2020) Ben Alaya, Mohamed Ali; Ternyck, Camille; Dabo-Niang, Sophie; Chebana, Fateh; Ouarda, Taha B. M. J.Change point detection methods have an important role in many hydrological and hydraulic studies of river basins. These methods are very useful to characterize changes in hydrological regimes and can, therefore, lead to better understanding changes in extreme flows behavior. Flood events are generally characterized by a finite number of characteristics that may not include the entire information available in a discharge time series. The aim of the current work is to present a new approach to detect changes in flood events based on a functional data analysis framework. The use of the functional approach allows taking into account the whole information contained in the discharge time series of flood events. The presented methodology is illustrated on a flood analysis case study, from the province of Quebec, Canada. Obtained results using the proposed approach are consistent with those obtained using a traditional change point method, and demonstrate the capability of the functional framework to simultaneously consider several flood features and, therefore, presenting a comprehensive way for a better exploitation of the information contained in a discharge time series.Item Downscaling extremes—An intercomparison of multiple statistical methods for present climate(Journal of Climate, 2012) Bürger, Gerd; Murdock, Trevor Q.; Schoeneberg (Werner), Arelia T.; Sobie, Stephen R.Five statistical downscaling methods [automated regression-based statistical downscaling (ASD), bias correction spatial disaggregation (BCSD), quantile regression neural networks (QRNN), TreeGen (TG), and expanded downscaling (XDS)] are compared with respect to representing climatic extremes. The tests are conducted at six stations from the coastal, mountainous, and taiga region of British Columbia, Canada, whose climatic extremes are measured using the 27 Climate Indices of Extremes (ClimDEX; http://www.climdex. org/climdex/index.action) indices. All methods are calibrated from data prior to 1991, and tested against the two decades from 1991 to 2010. A three-step testing procedure is used to establish a given method as reliable for any given index. The first step analyzes the sensitivity of a method to actual index anomalies by correlating observed and NCEP-downscaled annual index values; then, whether the distribution of an index corresponds to observations is tested. Finally, this latter test is applied to a downscaled climate simulation. This gives a total of 486 single and 162 combined tests. The temperature-related indices pass about twice as many tests as the precipitation indices, and temporally more complex indices that involve consecutive days pass none of the combined tests. With respect to regions, there is some tendency of better performance at the coastal and mountaintop stations. With respect to methods, XDS performed best, on average, with 19% (48%) of passed combined (single) tests, followed by BCSD and QRNN with 10% (45%) and 10% (31%), respectively, ASD with 6% (23%), and TG with 4% (21%) of passed tests. Limitations of the testing approach and possible consequences for the downscaling of extremes in these regions are discussed.Item Introduction to explaining extreme events of 2014 from a climate perspective(Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2015) Herring, Stephanie C.; Hoerling, Martin P.; Kossin, James P.; Peterson, Thomas C.; Stott, Peter A.The field of event attribution faces challenging questions. Can climate change influences on single events be reliably determined given that observations of extremes are limited and implications of model biases for establishing the causes of those events are poorly understood? The scientific developments in this report—now in its fourth year—as well as in the broader scientific literature, suggest that “event attribution” that detects the effects of long-term change on extreme events is possible. However, because of the fundamentally mixed nature of anthropogenic and natural climate variability, as well as technical challenges and methodological uncertainties, results are necessarily probabilistic and not deterministic. As the science advances, other questions are emerging. For what types of events can event attribution provide scientifically robust explanations of causes? Is near-real-time attribution possible? And, how useful are science-based explanations of extremes for society? We consider these questions in more detail.