Weather Services for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

HIW research, primarily case studies and statistical assessments of the weather at the venues and in the Olympic area and Sea-to-Sky, was conducted by PYR National Laboratory staff under the direction of the Vancouver SPC Science Transfer and Training meteorologist Brad Snyder. Original work by National Laboratory staff included the following:

Ruping Mo et. al: Collision of a Pineapple Express with an Arctic Outbreak over Complex Terrains of British Columbia, Canada – Forecast Challenges and Lessons Learned. Presented at 23rd Conference on Weather Analysis and Forecasting / 19th Conference on Numerical Weather Prediction, Omaha, NE, June 2009.

Ruping Mo et. al: Projecting Winter-Spring Climate in Vancouver from Antecedent ENSO and PDO Signals – Applications to the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Presented at the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Annual Conference, Winnipeg, MB, June 2010.

9.2 Olympic Team Area and Venue Weather Research

Venue forecaster on-the-job training (practicums) started in the winter of 2006-07. As team members and venue forecasters developed familiarity with their area of responsibility and venue-specific significant weather issues, a number of studies were concluded by team forecasters both for the benefit of team forecasters and for the Olympic Family. These included the following:

Chris Doyle and David Jones. Short Term Weather Patterns of Interest to 2010 Venue Managers. Environment Canada, revised September 2009.

Carl Dierking. Winds in the Callaghan Valley. U.S. National Weather Service, Juneau AK, 2009.

Andrew Teakles. Strong outflow wind events affect the Callaghan Valley Olympic venues. Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Congress, 2009.

Andrè Giguère et. al. Operational Evaluation of GEM-LAM 2.5 km and 1.0 km Models in view of the Vancouver 2010 Games. Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Congress, 2009.

9.3 Model Development

The Canadian GEM versions at the global 30-km and regional 15-km resolution were the driving models for semi- and fully automated forecast production. GEM 2.5 km and a special Olympic GEM 1.0 km were used by the forecasters as guidance and as inputs into the various nowcasting systems developed by SNOW-V10. The 1.0 km was also the database tool that the public could use to generate fully automated point forecasts in the Olympic area from the EC Olympic Weather web page. Model development for 2010 was extensive and complex, involving multiple nested grids of increasingly higher resolution down to 100 m, with validity periods of hours to weeks. RPN is responsible for the research and development of the modelling component of the NWP System for the CMC and the Regional Meteorological Centres of the MSC.

9.3.1 Forecaster Tools

Numerous forecaster tools, based on GEM 2.5 and GEM 1.0, were produced for Olympic forecasters. These included prognostic tephigram, time series, cross-section, and others that were suggested by operational staff. RPN’s forecaster tool development was aided by CMC’s A and P division staff, both locally in Vancouver and in Dorval, Quebec.

9.3.2 NWP Development

Certain improvements to GEM 2.5, including explicit physics, were implemented prior to 2009 when a “frozen” operational version of the model was maintained for the use of forecasters.

9.3.3 Downscaling

Very-high-resolution (100 m) downscaling of certain model-weather-element outputs was made available for venues and other locations for 2010 forecast purposes. RPN led research and development efforts for the production of downscaled forecast predictions.

9.3.4 Regional Ensemble Prediction System (REPS)

Ensemble forecasting is a numerical prediction method that is used to attempt to generate a spectrum of the possible future states of a dynamical system, like weather. Ensemble members were derived from the limited-area version of the Canadian GEM model at 33-km horizontal resolution over North America. It was operationalized for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games area, and produced ensemble products such as EPS-grams (meteograms) and probability charts for Olympic venues and related sites.

9.3.5 Nowcasting Project (SNOW-V10)

The nowcasting project used a variety of data sources, data integration and management techniques, and forecast production methodologies, to improve very-short-range (0-6–hour) forecasts of ambient weather in the Olympic area. This was a large national and international research demonstration project sanctioned by the WMO’s World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), a first for the Olympic Winter Games. It involved significant collaboration between researchers and meteorologists, both in the development of scientific objectives in the formative stage and in operational outputs at Games time. Nowcasting observations were used in routine nowcast and short-range forecast production in the Olympic area during the Games.

9.3.6 Snow Surface Temperature (SST) Forecasting

EC planned to produce forecasts of SST for all venues. These fields were produced using the downscaling approaches noted in 9.3.3. Prior to the development of the forecast, the WSP supported research and development on snow surface temperatures in the Whistler Olympic Park venue through a contract with a graduate student from the University of Utah. The university had pioneered, for the Salt Lake City 2002 Games, the production of a course-length forecast of SST based on the development of a climatology that was based on the thermal mapping of the course in various ambient meteorological conditions. We used the student’s work, in the form of a written research report, to provide background information and training on the topic for venue meteorologists. Although snow surface temperature forecasts were available at Games time for all venues, they were not part of the suite of weather elements required by VANOC.

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9.4 Climate Research and Reporting

The Olympic area was rather sparse in terms of data sites and long-term records of weather and climate observations. This prompted the early installation of venue weather systems wherever possible. Some long-term data sets, particularly for Whistler-Blackcomb, were available and were of use, but were inadequate for the variety of data ultimately required by the project and its clients.

9.4.1 Routine Climate Reporting

Observations at VANOC and other Olympic Autostation Network (OAN) sites have been archived, both nationally and in the PSPC regional archive. This allowed routine access to climate data as is currently available on the Environment Canada weather website’s “Historical Weather” link, and enabled climate research.

9.4.1.1 Routine Internal Reports

Internal climate reports, generally dealing (in great detail) with the specific weather record at the outdoor venues and the potential weather effects on the competition schedule, were prepared on behalf of VANOC for each of the Olympic periods of 2005 through 2009 and for Games time. These and some derivatives were used for forecaster education and training, and were a resource for a variety of users, including insurance companies, VANOC transportation, scientific researchers and the media.

9.4.1.2 Routine IOC and International Sport Federation Requirements

IOC and sport federation requirements for routine climate data at the venues were prepared for these clients as part of regular reporting to VANOC. Some of these data were also included in information handbooks and packages for team officials and athletes.

9.4.1.3 Special Studies

To rule out (in anticipation of related questions) the effect of climate change on the Games, a 30-year climatology of alpine-elevation temperatures from the U.S. National Weather Service radiosonde data base from Quileute, Washington, was produced in 2006. This study indicated an average temperature increase through the 1975-2005 period, at about 3000 metres above sea level, of about 0.4°C per decade, allowing us to reasonably discount the effects of climate change on an event planned for five years into the future.

VANOC’s insurers required an in-depth assessment of historical snowpack conditions for venue insurance, and were provided with one in 2009. Studies were also conducted on the solar climatology of the venues, snow water-equivalent ratios, and statistical assessments of observed venue weather parameters for data quality control and instrument location planning. The City of Vancouver received a probabilistic climatology of severe weather risk at Games time, and venue officials at Cypress Mountain requested and received an analysis of the probability of winds above certain thresholds for the Cypress grandstand. In addition, we completed several studies in 2009 in an effort to determine the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase during the Olympic Period.

9.5 WWRP and THORPEX

The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) is an international research initiative that is part of an overall coordinating programme, the WMO’s WWRP. THORPEX is intended to accelerate improvements in the accuracy of 1-to-14-day weather forecasts for the benefit of society and the economy. It builds upon ongoing advances within the basic-research and operational-forecasting communities, and will make progress by enhancing international collaboration between these communities and with users of forecast products. In cooperation with other THORPEX agencies and scientists, weather experiments were planned to coincide with the pre-Games period and the Winter Olympic Games, in areas ranging from data assimilation to socio-economic impacts.

9.5.1 T-PARC 2008-09

From early summer 2008 until late March 2009, an international THORPEX experiment, the Pacific-Asian Regional Campaign (PARC), was conducted. PARC was designed to be conducted in two phases, i.e., summer and winter. The main intent of PARC is to improve our understanding of the earlier stages of typhoons from genesis to recurvature, because an improved knowledge of the tropical cyclone to extratropical transition (ET) is essential to understanding and predicting the downstream impacts over North America. PARC is therefore unique, with a dual emphasis on the shorter-range dynamics and forecast problems of one region and the resulting medium-range dynamics and forecast problems of a downstream region (the west coast of North America). To put this into perspective, historical downstream events since 2005 have included two record floods (one in BC and the other in Oregon/Washington), and California forest fires. All of these events were major disasters on the west coast and were relatively poorly predicted in the medium range. Accurate short-range predictions (< 3 days) of aspects of the life cycle of a tropical cyclone near the east Asian coast will mean an increased likelihood of accurate medium-range predictions (3-10 day) of floods, widespread severe weather outbreaks and damaging extratropical cyclones downstream over North America.

From the 2010 perspective, increasing our understanding of ET was a critical activity. Heavy rains in January of 2005, resulting from a synergy of tropical energy and the Rossby wave, obliterated much of the local snowpack below 1800 m. It did not recover to near-normal levels for the remainder of the winter. In retrospect, this was an event with some predictability in the scale of a week or more. Advance notice of similar events in the weeks prior to the 2010 Olympics was useful for planning and mitigation. In fact, good forecasts of particularly wet and mild episodes made in mid-January 2010 helped inform VANOC’s strategies for preserving the Cypress Mountain venue.

Canadian participation in the summer phase of PARC has so far been limited to model data assimilation and some data assimilation experiments.

9.5.2 Winter-Phase TPARC and 2010 Winter Storms Reconnaissance Project

PARC 2008-09 continued beyond the ET phase into the late winter of 2008-09, and involved increasing the density of weather observations on the east Asian mainland and over the western and central North Pacific. EC contributed funding to supply Roshydromet (the Russian National Hydrometeorological Service) with 600 extra radiosondes and related supplies. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) G-IV aircraft and U.S. Air Force winter storms reconnaissance C-130 aircraft conducted near daily weather reconnaissance and targeted “dropsonde” flights over Japanese and adjacent and north-central Pacific waters in the January-March period of 2009. Targeting missions were planned by a group of meteorologists, including Olympic team forecasters at the PSPC. They used an advanced data targeting system through project access to real-time European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) forecast products for the North Pacific. Normally, ECMWFproducts are available only to European consortium members (not Canada).

Although invited to participate in a similar process during the winter of 2009-10, POD participation was minimal due to workload. Nevertheless, researchers and NOAA meteorologists kept the Olympic period in mind during the winter storms reconnaissance project, and several missions were undertaken to help improve forecasts for the Games.

9.5.3 Research and Forecast Demonstration Projects

Research and forecast demonstration projects (RDP/FDP) are an essential part of the WWRP and are intended to confirm, by objective measures, the enhanced prediction capabilities gained through improved understanding and/or the utilization of enabling technologies. FDP proposals are expected to outline the aim and method of demonstrating improved prediction capability and indicate the extent to which a number of qualifying attributes are present. The following attributes describe the objectives of FDPs within the overall WWRP:

to address forecasts of weather of international applicability, with emphasis on high-impact weather;
to articulate and meet clear evaluation protocols;
to meet the expectation of success and level of support available;
to produce a clear advance on current local or global operational practices;
to produce forecasts that can be provided in real-time and forecast information that can be communicated for user utilization and subsequent impact evaluation.

RDPs do not generally produce operational, real-time outputs or products. Although outputs were not guaranteed by SNOW-V10, many were in fact provided, and therefore the nature of the project was a synthesis of FDP and RDP.

Olympic Games have become inspirations for WWRP sanctioned forecast demonstration projects, beginning with Sydney (2000) and followed by Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and Vancouver (2010). Many FDP technologies were deployed for the winter of 2009 to allow the development of nowcast and improved forecasting approaches, and to give forecasters experience with some of the systems involved.

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