Wang:  Northern peatlands cover about 4 million km2, and half of these peatlands are estimated to contain permafrost and periglacial landforms, such as palsas and peat plateaus. In Labrador, northeastern Canada, peatland permafrost landforms are largely predicted to be present in the interior and absent along the coastline. However, few observations of these landforms in the interior, coupled with extensive use of coastal perennially frozen peatlands for traditional activities by Labrador Inuit and Innu suggests a need for further investigations. In 2020, the Northern Environmental Geoscience Laboratory began a new research program to better understand the distribution, characteristics, and sensitivity of peatland permafrost in coastal Labrador using a combination of research methods including remote sensing, machine learning, field investigations, and thermal modelling.

The first stage of this project involved the development of a consensus-based inventory of prospective peatland permafrost complexes using high-resolution satellite imagery. The inventory, which identified over 1000 likely peatland permafrost complexes within 100 km of the Labrador Sea coastline, has been validated with extensive field visits and low-altitude aerial photography and videography. A coastal gradient for palsa and peat plateau distribution was identified and is thought to be attributed to a combination of climatic and geomorphological influences. Other initiatives as part of this overarching project include historical air photo analysis to identify the scale of thaw at selected complexes over the past 70 years and characterization of contemporary peatland permafrost landform heights, sizes, and associated snow and vegetation conditions at selected complexes along the coast using remotely piloted aircraft surveys. This work provides an important baseline for future mapping, modelling, and climate change adaptation strategy development in northeastern Canada.

Shan:  Coastal upwelling is a prominent oceanic process that brings nutrient-rich deep waters to the sunlit surface, thereby regulating many productive fisheries and marine ecosystems around the globe. How the frequency, intensity, and duration of coastal upwelling might shift in a warming climate is therefore a question of vital importance.  In the first part of my presentation, I will discuss the temporal and spatial characteristics of the major wind-driven summertime coastal upwelling events off Nova Scotia.  In the second part, I will examine trends in coastal upwelling off Nova Scotia over the past two decades based on observations made from various platforms, including marine buoys, remote-sensing satellites, and autonomous underwater gliders. A series of novel upwelling metrics are derived to describe coastal upwelling trends in terms of frequency, intensity, and duration. The predictability of observed upwelling trends is also explored by assessing the performance of coastal operational model products.

Ariya: Particles, nano, micro and macro-particles, are ubiquitous on Earth. They are chemically, physically, and biologically diverse. They are naturally produced or increasingly through numerous anthropogenic activities, namely medicine-health, chemical industries, materials, construction, transport, communication, aerospace, agriculture, and energy sectors.  Air pollution, particularly airborne nano-size particles, have been identified as the cause of about 6 million premature deaths (WHO, 2020).  Aerosols are also significant in climate change and Earth’s energy processes. They play a role in radiation, ice nucleation and precipitation events (IPCC, 2018). The identified gap of knowledge by both the IPCC and the WHO are converging, and it becomes clear that they are related to the physicochemical characteristics of particles. Air and water are in motion, as are the particles in air and water. We should be able to observe, track, characterize and remediate in-situ and real-time in 4D (3 dimensions and time). In this talk, we provide an overview of the recent advances in this lab to help to fill the gap identified by the IPCC and the WHO in the age of climate change and COVID-19. We discuss the development of novel promising technologies for fast in-situ and real-time observation of aerosols and waterborne viruses and physicochemical transformations and ice nucleation of anthropogenic emerging nanoparticles (e.g., nano-plastics in air/water). We explore some links between fundamental studies that provide advances in designing zero-net energy and recyclable technology using natural particles in air and soil to remove gaseous and particulate matter in the hydrosphere, cryosphere, and atmosphere.

Smith: Understanding how climate change impacts crop growth and soil health in Canada and identifying ways to manage these impacts is especially important since temperatures in Canada are increasing faster than the global average. Historically we’ve seen how a warming climate can provide certain benefits as the available seasonal crop heat units and frost-free periods have increased over long-term historical averages. However, in the future, some agricultural regions could be subject to higher incidences of extreme drought, increased crop heat stresses and excess water. In this presentation, we will review the state of models and modelling procedures for predicting the impacts of climate change on cropping systems. We will demonstrate how crops in Canada may respond to climate change and discuss the benefits of adaptation by changing crop types, rotations, and fertilizer strategies. 

Kimbell:  Four years after the National Capital Region tornado outbreak of September 21, 2018, another summer convective storm affected southern Ontario (including the NCR), on May 21, 2022. This time, while the Northern Tornadoes Project did diagnose a few tornadoes, the storm’s primary manifestation was not tornadic. Rather, a linear convective system developed over southwestern Ontario, and maintained its linear characteristics throughout its trajectory across southeastern Ontario, the NCR, and into southern Quebec north of Montreal. Many people in Ontario and Quebec suddenly became familiar with the word “derecho,” which is Spanish for “straight ahead.” We will talk about derechos, including climatology, differences with tornadoes, and more.