The regional climate system is operated largely through the exchange of water and energy between the region and its environment and through the internal cycling and conversion of these quantities within the region, the ultimate test of our knowledge and understanding of a regional climate system is thus measured by our capability to quantify, and to predict, the water and energy cycle for the region. As such, one of the major objectives for the GEWEX Continental Scale Experiments is to assess the water and energy budgets for their corresponding study basins by using currently available datasets. The MAGS Water and Energy Budget Study (WEBS) is the MAGS endeavor to meet this demanding challenge. In particular, different observed, remotely-sensed, (re-)analyzed and modeled data were utilized to develop comprehensive assessments of the water and energy budgets for the Mackenzie Basin. This CDROM contains descriptions of the source datasets and methodology used in the study, a comprehensive compilation of the budgets, as well as discussions of the results in greater details than what we have been able to present in accompanying journal papers. During the course of the project, MAGS WEBS has been benefited tremendously from many colleagues and organizations that we want to acknowledge:
This work is supported by Environement Canada, the Mackenzie GEWEX Study (MAGS) project, and the Panel on Energy Research and Development(PERD). MAGS is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Environment Canada, and other government and industrial partners.
We wish to thank the many MAGS colleagues who have contributed directly or indirectly to this project. In addition, we want to thank Hang Tran, Alex Wong, Patrick Lui, Niranchala Nithyanandan, Sarah Paajanen, Billy Szeto and Julie Kim for their assistance in the WEBS calculations and data gathering and processing. The hypertext template for the CD was developed by Martine Vong, and Billy Szeto assisted in the making of the CD cover. The photo of the MRB used in the page top is from Dr. Hok Woo.
We also wish to thank Dr. John Roads for enlightening discussions throughout the course of this work, and Drs. Ron Stewart and Hok Woo for their encouragements during the early stage of this project.
The CRCM WEBS simulations were carried out by Dr. Murray MacKay and the SSM/I snowcover data were provided by Anne Walker and Chris Derksen. The CANGRID data was provided by Lucie Vincent. Some of the ERA-40 surface data were provided by Dr. Alan Betts. The GEM analysis data was provided by the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) and the discharge data were provided by the Water Survey of Canada (WSC).
The MAGS WEBS has been benefited greatly from being able to freely access over the World Wide Web the global reanalysis and other datasets from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP), Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), and the Global water Vapor Project (GVaP), among others.
Kit Szeto
November, 2005