DRI:
Drought Research Initiative

DRI Legacy

DRI endeavoured to provide tangible outcomes of its 5 year research effort to the broader scientific community and general public. This intention was addressed through focusing on several intiatives during the wind down of the network.

These efforts are listed below:

DRI:
Drought Research Initiative
About the DRI Data Legacy Data/Metadata Portal
Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) Model Prairie Soil Moisture Modelling

Index

Metadata file identifier

  • 5bd01f9a-f785-11dd-a108-00219b106224

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    Language

  • eng

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    Contact
    Individual name

  • Lei Wen

    • Organisation name

  • Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, McGill University

    • Contact information
    Phone
    Voice

  • (514) 398-1035

    • Address
    Delivery point

  • 805 Sherbrooke Street West

    • City

  • Montreal

    • Administrative area

  • QC

    • Postal code

  • H3A 2K6

    • Country

  • Canada

    • Electronic mail address

  • lei.wen@mcgill.ca

    • Role

  • originator

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    Metadata date stamp

  • 2010-10-05

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    Metadata standard name

  • ISO 19115 Geographic information - Metadata

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    Metadata standard version

  • ISO 19115:2003

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    Identification Information
    Citation
    Title

  • Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) Model Prairie Soil Moisture Modelling

    • Date
    Date

  • 2010-10-05

    • Date Type

  • publication

    • Abstract

  • A real-time drought monitoring and prediction system was developed for the Canadian Prairies and daily updated maps can be found at http://www.meteo.mcgill.ca/~leiwen/vic/prairies/. The system uses the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land surface macroscale hydrology model to simulate daily soil moistures for three soil layers (0-20 cm, 20-100 cm, and 0-100 cm) starting from 1 January, 1950, and continually running through present into the future with up to a month lead time. The system is driven by daily maximum and minimum air temperatures and precipitation from 1,167 meteorological stations for monitoring runs, and from the operational Canadian GEM (Global Environmental Multiscale) model and 40-number super ensemble forecasts for forecasting VIC runs. The system is updated daily at present. The VIC soil moisture is used together with the 56-yr climatology (1950-2005) to calculate a soil moisture index SMAPI (Soil Moisture Anomaly Percentage Index ) for measuring the severity of both agricultural and hydrological droughts; the prairie drought history starting from 1 January, 1950 up to present can then be reconstructed using SMAPI. The calculated SMAPI explains well most documented severe drought events on the Prairies over the past 60 years; and compares favorably with the North American drought monitor and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada drought maps. The data available in the DRI Data Legacy constitutes the values for the 4393 grid points covered in the domain starting January 1 1950 and ending for the SMAPI index and soil moisture in March 7 2009, and the forcing data ends Dec 31 2006. Later data may be available directly from Lei Wen.

    • Status

  • onGoing

    • Descriptive keywords
    Keyword

  • Atmosphere > Atmospheric Temperature > Air Temperature

    • Keyword

  • Atmosphere > Precipitation > Precipitation Amount

    • Keyword

  • Climate Indicators > Drought/Precipitation Indices

    • Keyword

  • Land Surface > Soils > Soil Moisture/Water Content

    • Thesaurus name
    Title

  • GCMD

    • Date
    Date

  • 2007-04-01

    • Date Type

  • publication

    • Spatial representation type

  • grid

    • Language

  • eng

    • Topic category

  • climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

    • Extent
    Geographic element
    West bound longitude

  • -119.875

    • East bound longitude

  • -95.375

    • South bound latitude

  • 49.125

    • North bound latitude

  • 59.875

    • Temporal element
    Extent
  • gml:beginPosition:

    1950-01-01T00:00:00

  • gml:endPosition:

    2009-09-03T00:00:00

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    Distribution information
    Distribution format
    Name

  • TXT

    • Version

  • N/A

    • Distributor
    Distributor contact
    Organisation name

  • DRI Data Legacy

    • Contact information
    Online resource
    Linkage

  • http://www.drinetwork.ca/

    • Role

  • Distributor

    • Transfer options
    Transfer size (Mb)

  • 6000

    • On-line resource
    Linkage

  • http://odin.meteo.mcgill.ca/dri_download/vic_input_output.zip

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