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Weather services in Canada and the United States—130 years of cooperation - a model for international meteorology
David W. Phillips, MSC, Downsview, ON, Canada
There is a close special bond between Canadian and American meteorological communities and services that so typifies the historic friendship between the two countries. This affection is based on a very long and proud history which stretches back 130 years to the establishment of forecasting services. In the late 1860s, a series of disastrous storms resulted in considerable loss of life and property at sea and on the Great Lakes. Both the Canadian and United States governments came under considerable pressure to do something to alleviate the situation - erect more lighthouses, install more navigation aids such as buoys and fog whistles, and establish a storm warning service. In 1871, the head of the Canadian weather service, wrote to the Chief Signal Officer of the United States to inquire about the possibility of "a systematic interchange, by telegraph, of meteorological information between Canada and Washington". The next year the free daily exchange of observed data between the two countries began and has continued uninterrupted ever since. In those very early years, as Canadians learned to map and forecast the daily weather and arrange for storm warning stations along the east coast and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence, the United States provided storm warnings and general forecasts for Canada until 1876. In the decades to follow, the network of reporting stations expanded across the West as settlers moved west with the railroad. As new stations were opened, their observations were automatically included in the data exchange between Canada and the United States.
Throughout the 20th Century, accelerated weather service demands provided a wide range of opportunities for cooperation in meteorology. By the end of 1941, the demand of weather services by the US military was so great that they were authorized to set up their own stations and forecast centres in Canada. They set up forecast centres at Edmonton, Prince George, and Whitehorse, briefing offices at five intermediate airports and more than 24 observing stations in northwest Canada. Shortly after World War II, the two countries established and operated jointly a network of High Arctic observing stations. For 25 years together they ran five weather stations in the Canadian arctic. As a result, we were able to grasp for the first time the nature of the synoptic weather patterns of North America. There have been other cooperative programs, to name just a few: trans-boundary air quality monitoring; the ocean station vessel program, the International Field Year on the Great Lakes,and revisions to the wind chill.
Our weather connections and interests go far beyond the establishment and operation of our weather services. Canadian-American meteorology is characterized by a century or more of friendships and mutually-beneficial partnerships. Examples of active and purposeful cooperation abound between universities, the media, government agencies, professional societies (AMS and Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society), the private sector and individuals. Cooperation in meteorology between Canada and the United States is a model of international partnership - people exchanging weather and climate data freely, sharing information and knowledge, and making technology available.
Session 1, American Weather History
Tuesday, 25 June 2002, 9:50 AM-1:30 PM
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