I repeat that. The Cons. Are. Destroying. Our. Weather. Reports. What next, no more dictionaries, or only Con-approved vocabulary? Makes sense. Words fail me, now.
Cuts jeopardizing quality of Environment Canada's weather service: report
The analysis — Degradation in Environment Canada's Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage — noted the lack of data on climate conditions can affect decisions on major infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers as well as a number of "real-life" decisions made by Canadians every day.
"The common assumption among users is that the data has been observed accurately, checked for mistakes and stored properly," said the report, printed in June 2008. "It is profoundly disturbing to discover the true state of our climate data network and the data we offer to ourselves and the real world."
The report said the cuts are part of a trend that began 10 to 15 years earlier when the former Liberal government was trying to eliminate the federal deficit, prompting a shift toward automated stations to replace people in the field. In one case, the report quoted an employee who had observed first hand, as an automated weather station was "fooled" into reporting drizzle on a hot sunny July day in Edmonton with temperatures approaching 30 C.
"Aside from the obvious public credibility issues involved with reporting drizzle out of a sunny sky, the greater problem has to do with the fact that this error and others like it are saved into the long-term climate archive, forcing future generations to deal with them," said the unnamed employee in the report.
SIDEBAR: Key findings in report:
- Automatic precipitation sensors are subject to significant and well-known errors, which have significantly compromised the integrity of Canada's precipitation data;
- National coverage of certain climate elements, such as hours of bright sunshine, have been effectively terminated;
- Human quality control of climate data ceased as of April 1, 2008. Automated quality control is essentially non-existent. There is no program in place to prevent erroneous data from entering the national climate archive;
- Climate data, which could be gathered at minimal additional cost, is not being gathered due to lack of funds;
- Climate data, which could be gathered with minimal additional effort, is not being gathered due to lack of personnel;
- Some existing data, which needs to be interpreted and processed before being placed into the national archive, is being ignored due to lack of resources;
- A significant portion of the volunteer climate network will likely be lost due to a decision on the part of the Meteorological Service of Canada to discontinue processing paper forms and to emphasize electronic input;
- Clients of Environment Canada (both internal and external) cannot obtain the information they need. This has significant implications for programs carried out by all levels of government, the private sector and the international scientific community; and
- Lack of resources and delayed quality control of climate data have resulted in updates of Intensity/Duration/Frequency curves that proceed in fits and starts. Systematic and regular updates are desired by the engineering community in order to design public infrastructure (roads, buildings, sewers) that will be able to cope with severe storms and phenomena associated with changing climate.
- These issues are widely recognized by staff within the department, and are becoming increasingly obvious to outside partners and clients, damaging morale within and credibility outside the department.
Source: Degradation in Environment Canada's Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage. June 2008.
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