Research

We have been applying the thin plate spline smoothing algorithms (ANUSPLIN) developed by Dr. Michael Hutchinson of The Australian National University (http://cres.anu.edu.au/) to Canadian and U.S. climate data. This work is in partnership with Dr. Hutchinson and The National Archive and Data Management Branch of Environment Canada. We thank them for access to data and for encouraging the development of our spatial climate models. We also would like to thank Tim Owen at the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html ) for his assistance with US data for our North American models.

Thin plate splines should not be confused with simple univariate cubic splines. They can be thought of as a non-parametric, multi-dimensional curve fitting technique for application to noisy multi-variate data. ANUSPLIN offers an operationally efficient means to develop spatially continuous climate models ("surfaces"). This is especially important to many forest applications because weather station data are rarely available in remote forest locations.

The approach is also useful for mapping climate. Gridded climate data is often used for running spatial process models and other ecological applications. Many articles are available which describe the methods and applications in detail. View list.

Our aims are to support climate impact and climate change analyses in forestry including species modeling, exotic species risk assessments and productivity studies. This page will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Our work includes the following.

1. Long term mean surfaces and grids for Canada
2. Long term mean surfaces and grids for North America
3. Monthly historical surfaces and grids dating from 1900 for North America
4. Climate change experiments
5. Surfaces and grids of GCM and RCM climate change scenarios to support climate change impact studies.
   
   Visit the Transient High Resolution Data link to download data at: http://www.cics.uvic.ca/scenarios/index.cgi?Transient_High_Resolution_Data
   
   Also see the Climate Change link at the Atlas of Canada for some maps and animations developed with partners. http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/index.html
   
6. Weekly mean (1961/90) and historical surfaces from 1961 (contact Dan McKenney if interested)
7. Daily surfaces for parts of Canada from 1961 (contact Dan McKenney if interested)
8. Other miscellaneous surfaces

Many of our climate grids are available for downloading, others require special permission because they have not been completely tested and/or peer reviewed. Point estimates at specific locations (eg. research plots, field locations) may also be available upon request from Dan McKenney.