Great Lakes Regional Pilot Area

The Great Lakes NACSP Regional Pilot Area will provide products and services that assist stakeholders assess actual and future states of water resources in the GLSLR basin. Objectives of this activity are:

• Monitoring, Research and Modeling: Reduce uncertainty in estimates of observed Great Lakes –St. Lawrence River (GLSLR) water supplies, and improve skill in forecasting future water supplies, provide climate change hydroclimate information for Great Lakes stakeholders.
• Climate Summaries and Outlooks: Enhance binational collaboration on existing seasonal climate summary and outlook products

Relevant Links:

Great Lakes Region: Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlooks:

• Bulletin summarizing the latest season’s weather and water level conditions and weather and water level-related impacts over the Great Lakes and provides an outlook for the upcoming quarter.

Great Lakes Water Levels:

• Monitoring - explanation of the Great Lakes water levels monitoring network, links to individual station data
• Observations - daily levels compared with last year at each master station as well as longterm hydrographs for each lake
• Forecasts – seasonal forecasts from the Army Corps of Engineers/Environment Canada and GLERL’s AHPS model; decadal forecast information from climate studies

Great Lakes Hydro-Climate Dashboard:

• Online data visualization tool that allows you to plot and download monthly average water level data as well as precipitation, runoff, simulated over-lake evaporation, and more; also seasonal and decadal forecasts

Great Lakes Coastal Forecast System:

• Short-term nowcasts and forecasts (up to 5 days) for surface currents, wind, waves, ice, water levels, water temperature and temperature profiles

Great Lakes Ice Cover Data:

• Includes current ice cover conditions, historical ice cover, and ice cover forecasting

Great Lakes CoastWatch Node:

• Near real-time satellite observations for surface water temperature and ice cover

Report: State of Climate Change Science in the Great Lakes Basin: A Focus on Climatological, Hydrologic and Ecological Effects - Executive Summary; Full Report

• State of climate change knowledge for 2010-2014 supported by a systematic literature review and database compilation of academic and grey literature on climate change impacts in the Great Lakes Basin;
• A narrative of key physical, chemical and ecological impacts of climate change in the Basin;
• An assessment of information confidence based on IPCC AR5 uncertainties guidance including volume of evidence, consistency or agreement of results and limitations to research; and
• An identification of key knowledge gaps across a range of scientific research themes.