Final Technical Report Project: Climate change and Ontario’s Far North winter roads P.I.: William A. Gough Date: February 25, 2016 According to C4.1 – C4.6, the responsibilities are: C.4.1 Assess climate conditions needed for the development and sustenance of the winter roads. Past opening dates will be correlated to concurrent climate conditions to determine thermal thresholds necessary for the integrity of the winter roads. Road opening dates are available for the Moosonee-Attawapiskat winter road from previous community contact. Concurrent climate data is available at the Moosonee Airport, Peawanuck, Fort Severn, Big Trout Lake and Lansdowne House (Neskantaga) from Environment Canada. The Recipient will carry out the above assessment based on the methodology of its previous study for a winter road in Norman Wells, NWT. C.4.2 Develop projections of the climate (temperature) thresholds identified for the two winter roads in C.4.1 for the rest of the century using the Recipient’s ensemble tool, C.4.3 Apply the projections developed in C.4.2 to the two winter roads identified in C.4.1 to assess the timing when a winter road failure may occur. This is defined as a year when the thermal threshold for the development of the winter road (number of continuous days below a temperature threshold) is not met. Then, the recipient will calculate the number of winter road failures per decade for the rest of the century at these two winter roads. C.4.4 Conduct the assessment described in C.4.3 at other Far North winter roads using both historical (from C.4.1) and future (from C.4.2) climate data at Big Trout Lake and Lansdowne House airports. C.4.5 Share the project findings from in C.4.1 - C.4.4 with local communities in Ontario’s Far North. C.4.6 Prepare a final report to summarize the Project findings as set out in section C.4, and publicize the results within a year of Project completion via conference presentations or journal publications or website. Actions undertaken to date of the report and how they relate to the objectives In order to complete the objectives listed above the following steps have been taken: • Engaged Yukari Hori, Jerry Jien and Megan Sheremata to work on the project (a senior doctoral student) with experience in climate modeling and Ontario Far North research • Examined the history of opening dates of the winter road linking Moosonee to Attawapiskat and correlated these opening dates to concurrent climate conditions, particularly thermal measures (C.4.1) • Hori visited the Fort Albany FN to interview community members about their use of the winter roads and recent changes to opening dates (C.4.1, C.4.5). Sheremata visited Fort Albany FN for two follow up visits. • Jerry Jien used ensemble tool found from the UTSC climate lab website (http://climatechange.utsc.utoronto.ca) to project the temperature anomalies for the winter road region as well as other regions in Ontario’s Far North. The localizer tool provided anomalies for temperature and precipitation for the intervals of 2030s, 2050s and 2080s. Three different models were available; SR-A2, SR-A1B, and SR-B1. (C.4.2, C.4.4) • Produced a paper on the thermal thresholds for the Moosonee – Attawapiskat winter road which has been recently submitted to a peer reviewed journal, Climatic Change. The paper is attached to this report. (C.4.1, C.4.6) • Produced a paper on Fort Albany’s to vulnerability changes in winter road conditions (C.4.5, C.4.6) • Produced a paper on projections of the impact of climate change on winter roads in Ontario’s Far North (C.4.2, C.4.3, C.4.4, C.4.6) Project Milestones Some of the objectives that have been met are: 1. Visited the Fort Albany Nation community on three occasions (Hori, Sheremata) to discuss the research objectives and to interview communities on the use of winter roads and historical ice season. 2. Determined from climate data, thresholds necessary for the opening of winter roads for Fort Albany winter road. 3. Projected climate conditions for Ontario’s Far North and applied winter road thermal thresholds. 4. Produced three research papers on 1) temperature thresholds for winter roads for the Moosonee-Attawapiskat winter road, 2) community [Fort Albany FN) vulnerability to changes in the winter road, and 3) projected reduction of winter roads in Ontario’s Far North . This is to confirm the University of Toronto is in compliance (see with Appendix the terms A,B and and conditionsC) of the Agreement. ______________________________________ William A. Gough, Principal Investigator Appendix A: Manuscript of paper 1 Trends in the seasonal length and opening dates of a winter road in the western James Bay region of Ontario’s Far North, Canada Yukari Hori*1, William A. Gough1, Ken Butler2, Leonard J.S. Tsuji1,3 1Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough 2Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough 3 Health Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough Abstract In northern Canada, winter roads are essential for nearby communities. The seasonal length of the roads depends on particular meteorological conditions that play a significant role in determining the viable operating season of the winter roads. In this study, we investigated whether there is a temporal relationship between seasonal weather trends and the historical opening dates of the James Bay Winter Road in Ontario’s Far North. The statistical significance of the temporal trends and their magnitude are determined by the Mann-Kendall test and the Theil-Sen method. Results showed that the decreasing trends in the freezing degree-days (FDDs) are statistically significant, along with the statistically significant increasing trends of monthly averages of both Tmin and Tmean during the winter months in the western James Bay region for the 1961–2014 period. However, there were no statistically significant linkages between opening dates and FDDs detected, largely due the paucity of opening dates data, although early opening dates appear to result from larger FDDs during the last ten years. The FDDs during the months of October through December were more closely linked to opening dates than FDDs that were calculated up the opening date (including January dates) suggesting the key role of preconditioning during late fall and early winter. The lowest FDDs for the months of October to December that resulted in a viable winter road were 380 degree-days. This threshold can be potentially used as a lower threshold for winter roads. Introduction 1 An increase in average surface temperature has been observed in the Canadian Arctic and subarctic by instrumental records and indigenous observations (Ford et al., 2006a; Furgal & Prowse, 2008; Hassol, 2004). Projections of future climate trends in northern Canada have indicated that changes in the variability and intensity of climate conditions are expected to be greater than in other parts of the world. As a result, the intensified warming will cause a number of significant impacts in the cryosphere, including sea ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice sheets, lake and river ice, and permafrost (Furgal & Prowse, 2008; Gagnon & Gough, 2005b). The most significant impact of climate change on transportation in Ontario’s Far North is the reduced viability of winter roads. Ontario’s Far North covers the northern portion of Ontario, as defined by the Far North Act, 2010 (Government of Ontario, 2015). A network of winter roads links 31 remote-northern First Nations communities to all-season road systems (Government of Ontario, 2014). Winter roads in northern Canada consist of ice roads over land, frozen lakes, and rivers (ACIA, 2005). This type of the road is very common in Canada and Alaska (Adam, 1978). Such seasonal roads provide not only the transport of heavy equipment, fuel, and cargo at a low cost, but they also facilitate social and cultural interactions among nearby remote communities. Moreover, they provide access to certain hunting and fishing grounds for many First Nations members during winter months. However, it has been reported that the winter road season has been shortened in northern Canada and Alaska due to the effects of a warmer climate (Hinzman et al., 2005; Tam et al., 2013). In this study, we focused on the James Bay Winter Road located in the western James Bay region of Ontario’s Far North, Canada. The main objectives of this study were to examine if winter road seasons have been affected by climate conditions and identify the potential effects of climate change, focusing on opening dates of the road. The James Bay Winter Road runs through several rivers and muskeg areas across the western James Bay coast; thus, changes in the length and timing of the river 2 and/or muskeg ice are of particular climatic interest. However, no datasets for river and/or muskeg ice freeze-up were found to exist, so landfast sea ice was used as a proxy for the river and muskeg ice freeze-up in the western James Bay region. We acknowledge the climate factors are also linked with variation in the closing dates of the winter road. Knowland et al. (2010) addresses that non-climatic factors such as annual shipping demands, community re-supply needs, and other economic issues that have likely contributed to the timing of the closing dates of the winter road. Also, compared to the closing dates, there is normally more pressure to open the winter road as early as possible, so the climate factors are key to determining the opening dates. To our knowledge, no previous studies have carried out a comprehensive analysis of winter road records in Ontario’s Far North.