Daily temperature records from a mesonet in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, 2005–2010

Abstract

Abstract. Near-surface air temperatures were monitored from 2005 to 2010 in a mesoscale network of 230 sites in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Alberta, Canada. The monitoring network covers a range of elevations from 890 to 2880 m above sea level and an area of about 18 000 km 2 , sampling a variety of topographic settings and surface environments with an average spatial density of one station per 78 km 2 . This paper presents the multiyear temperature dataset from this study, with minimum, maximum, and mean daily temperature data available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.880611. In this paper, we describe the quality control and processing methods used to clean and filter the data and assess its accuracy. Overall data coverage for the study period is 91 %. We introduce a weather-system-dependent gap-filling technique to estimate the missing 9 % of data. Monthly and seasonal distributions of minimum, maximum, and mean daily temperature lapse rates are shown for the region.

Assessments of downscaled climate data with a high‐resolution weather station network reveal consistent but predictable bias

“…Missing temperature records from the FCA data (~9%) were estimated using a weather‐system dependent gap‐filling technique described in Wood et al . (). Missing humidity records from the FCA data (~11%) were estimated using an inverse‐distance‐weighted (IDW) interpolation approach, described in Wood et al .…”

“…Observed data are from the FCA and consist of daily minimum, maximum, and average temperature and daily average relative humidity, specific humidity, and vapour pressure. Daily mean data are calculated from hourly measurements recorded between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2010 from a network of 232 monitoring stations located in the southern Alberta prairies, foothills, and mountains (Figure ) (Wood et al, , ). Stations are located on an approximate grid with ~10 km spacing in the north–south direction, between latitudes of 50.31° and 51.49°N, and ~5 km (mountains) or ~10 km (prairies) spacing in the east–west direction, between longitudes of 113.35° and 116.28°W.…”

“…The FCA presents a unique opportunity in this respect. The FCA covers over ~18,000 km 2 of the mountains, foothills, and prairies of southern Alberta, Canada (Cullen and Marshall, ; Wood et al, , ). Consisting of 232 weather monitoring stations in the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the FCA offers a continuous 5‐year record of daily weather conditions with an average spatial resolution of one station per 78 km 2 .…”

Climate change and hydrology at the prairie margin: Historic and prospective future flows of Canada's Red Deer and other Rocky Mountain rivers

“…Substantial variation in river flow projections from downscaled GCMs or RCMs is common because precipitation modelling and forecasts are inherently variable and much less confident than temperature estimations (Coquard et al, ; Knutti & Sedláček, ; Stephens et al, ). The important snow accumulation and melt processes are especially challenging for modelling in the SSRB due to the common temperature inversions in the central Rocky Mountains in the winter, and extensive sublimation and redistribution due to the frequent warm and dry Chinook winds (Shepherd et al, ; Wood et al, ).…”

“…Climate grid points were extracted and input with site parameters including elevation, slope, and aspect, derived from digital elevation models, and physical parameters including latitude and regional adiabatic lapse rate (Berg, Samuelson, Willms, Pearce, & Rood, ). However, this free‐air lapse rate may have slightly overestimated the surface lapse rate, and temperature inversions are common in the winter (Wood, Marshall, Whitehead, & Fargey, ), further challenging the modelling. The precipitation module of MTCLIM was modified to derive precipitation from base sites rather than from isohyet maps, which were unavailable for some locations.…”