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Following Program Review I, Dr. Doug Whelpdale was asked to take the lead in reviewing AQRB's monitoring activities and developing recommendations on future monitoring to the year 2000. In carrying out this mandate, a working group was convened, input was sought from headquarters and regional staff, and two workshops were organized.
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A report was submitted in November 1995, which recommended among other things that AQRB establish and maintain about five observing stations to form a "CORE" national atmospheric composition change network in Canada, which should be given a very high funding priority (i.e., higher than support of program-specific observations).
Early in 1996, work was started toward developing an implementation plan for the CORE network. Building on Dr.Whelpdale's report, and in consultation with AES Headquarters and Regional scientists, a proposal for the establishment of seven Canadian air chemistry and radiation research measurement stations was finalized in time to prepare a submission for strategic capital funding support in the fall of 1998.
More recently, the need for CORE-type, long term measurements of atmospheric constituents (both those directly affecting climate, such as the greenhouse gases and aerosols, and "controlling species", which have an important impact on the control of the radiatively active species in the atmosphere) has been underlined by Canada's commitment to contribute towards the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Although the needs for a global climate observing system were first articulated in 1990 at the Second World Climate Conference, the importance of GCOS has been given additional emphasis in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and by the Kyoto Conference. The Atmospheric Component of the GCOS Plan for Canada includes the CORE network as a "substantial contribution" to the GCOS atmospheric constituents component (Desmond O'Neill, Discussion Paper "Development of a GCOS Plan for Canada - Atmospheric Component", February 1999).
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