By Sarah Wallace

Climate Station near Prince Albert doing well

Aug 16, 2012 | 12:11 PM

A climate station at the Conservation Learning Centre (CLC), south of Prince Albert, has reached six months of being operational.

The climate station, which is a sister station to a climate station in Saskatoon is run by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC)

Virginia Wittrock, a research scientist and climatologist for the SRC, said climate stations like these allow the SRC to study weather trends.

“It’s Saskatchewan Research Council’s second climate station. Our first one was set up in Saskatoon in 1963 and we kind of thought it was time to set up a second one. The Conservation Learning Centre is an ideal place to set up a high level climate station because the Conservation Learning Centre is basically a research farm, so it kind of goes hand and hand,” said Wittrock.

“Over the long term it will allow us to track trends, whether it’s wetter, drier, more precipitation, less precipitation, what the wind speeds are doing, what sunshine is doing.”

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Wittrock said the longer a climate station can run the better it will do and said 30 years is a good average as to when data can really be utilized.

After 30 years the SRC can track trends in temperatures, precipitation, and things like that.

“Unless you have instruments on the ground you can’t actually say that the climate models are predicting true or not, so that’s why climate stations are so valuable, you can ground proof your models, and they help with extreme events,” Wittrock said.

Even in the six months of the climate station being active, they’ve been able to see some variations between the Climate Station and the Prince Albert airport system.

“The last spring frost, which is huge for agriculture, at our site it was May 3rd, but the airport recorded on May 29th,” Wittrock said.

Wittrock took an example of variation between the Climate Station and PA airport by looking at the huge wind storm that passed through the area in June.

The airport recorded the wind peaking out at 74 kilometers per hour, where the climate station recorded the wind at 113 kilometers an hour.

“113 kilometers an hour is only 3 kilometers per hour less than it could be for it to be considered a hurricane force wind,” said Wittrock.

The climate station located at the CLC is a remote site that’s off the grid, and runs on solar power.

They keep the sites running from financial support from various organizations, this way they can hopefully in the long run get the information on the web so more people can get access to it.

The more money they receive the more likely they will be able to do this.

“The data can be utilized by pretty much anybody in any industry, be it agriculture, be it mining, be it forestry. I know the guys at the forest fire management branch are thrilled that we’ve put it up. Once we get all the little bugs worked out, they may use it for their fire codes,” said Wittrock.

Construction crews can even use data from the station because they record soil temperatures. The climate station will be able to tell construction crews how far down frost levels are.

For more information on the climate stations at the CLC and in Saskatoon click here.

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Twitter: @princealbertnow