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Click on images to enlarge
The lower atmospheric wind profiler surrounded by 4 Radio Acoustic Sounding System cylinders that record the vertical temperature profile.
The Communication Tower. Each dish (3) communicates with a specific buoy deployed in the Lunenburg Bay
Battery Point Lighthouse in Lunenburg Bay where a weather tower has been installed. |
For more than a year now, Environment Canada and its scientific partners from Dalhousie University's Department of Oceanography, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, and the private sector have been developing a multi-disciplinary scientific project to take place over the next five years. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a fine-scale observation and modelling system of the marine environment of the Lunenburg Bay and its surrounding coastline.
In June 2002, three buoys, an automated weather station, and a lower atmospheric wind profiler (which provides real-time measurement of wind speed and direction at different heights) were installed in Lunenburg Bay. This group of instruments includes the main elements of a fine-scale meteorological and oceanographic observation network. For example, from a meteorological perspective, this network will provide a better understanding of meteorological phenomena such as local sea breezes and their effects on the coast, local scale wind regimes, as well as improved forecasting of fog.
The World Junior Sailing Championships (Lunenburg, July 2002) was used as a springboard for the Lunenburg Bay project. First of all, the Meteorological Service of Canada participated to this international event by supplying an on-site meteorologist who gave daily weather briefings to the instructors from different countries and who acquired important knowledge of meteorological local effects of the region. In addition, our meteorologist used their briefing, an experimental forecast product for the event based on a very high resolution (1 km) computer model developed for the Lunenburg Bay project. Finally, the Dalhousie University Department of Oceanography generated a tidal current forecast for the sailing event area for the duration of the championship.
According to the chairman of the 2002 World Youth Sailing Championships, Environment Canada possibly established new standards for this yearly international event, with its multi-media weather briefings and with the availability of various high-tech experimental products such as on-line animations of high resolution numerical outputs. Like the director of the race said "This international sailing event, never got the presence of a meteorologist or a weather reporter of that calibre who tried to explain and to integrate local wind effects in the current forecast instead of only reading the weather report for the day like it was done in the previous years". This is possibly one reason among many others why Environment Canada's meteorologist got applauded at every morning's briefing, even if the forecast on most days was for light wind conditions.
Forecaster's Note: Of course, each of our forecasts was perfect but Mother Nature decided not to follow our forecasts on certain days.
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