Engineering and Technology

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A Comprehensive Set of Interpolated Climate Data for Alberta
(Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, 2010) Mbogga, Michael; Wang, Tongli; Hansen, Christine; Hamann, Andreas
We present an easily accessible database of interpolated climate data for Alberta that includes monthly, annual, decadal, and 30-year normal climate data for the last 106 years (1901 to 2006), as well as climate change projections for the 21st century from 23 general circulation models. The database builds on the Alberta Climate Model (Alberta Environment 2005) and a set of five future projections that are recommended and widely used by Alberta government agencies (Barrow and Yu 2005). We added 15,000 historical and projected climate surfaces that include variables relevant for biological research and infrastructure planning, such as growing and chilling degree days, heating and cooling degree days, growing season length descriptors, frost free days and extreme minimum temperature. The database can be queried through a provided software package ClimateAB. A representative subset of these climate surfaces has been thoroughly checked against observed weather station data. We report error estimates for historical climate data and discuss the strengths and limitations of this database for use by natural resource managers and researchers.