David E. Atkinson

• Professor and Chair at University of Victoria

Powdery mildew (Erysiphe necator) is a fungal disease causing significant loss of grape yield in commercial vineyards. The rate of development of this disease varies annually and is driven by complex interactions between the pathogen, its host, and environmental conditions. The long term impacts of weather and climate variability on disease develop...

Guidelines and best practices to engage Indigenous people in Arctic regions in biophysical research have emerged since the 1990s. Despite these guidelines, mainstream scientists still struggle to create effective working relationships with Indigenous people and engage them in their research. We encountered this issue when we visited three communiti...

Research investigating climate-driven changes in northern lake ecosystems is complicated by a legacy of initiatives that have used sporadic observations, often confined to open-water seasons, to define the lake state. These observations have conventionally been lake water samples analyzed for a suite of physical and chemical parameters and are indi...

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has, in recent years, contributed to increases in the yields of major agricultural (annual) crops like wheat and barley in Canada. How such forcing alters the pattern of yield variation across different geographic scales and across large agricultural landscapes like the Canadian Prairies is less understood. Y...

Diseases can cause severe losses to agricultural crop yield and quality. Wheat stripe (yellow) rust (Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici (Pst)), is a prevalent fungal disease in all wheat growing regions around the world. It has the potential to cause devastating outbreaks/severe epidemics that threaten the world's wheat supply and, in turn, global...

A study on the modern dynamics and shoreline changes from 1954 to 2014 of the Molise coast (central Adriatic Sea) has been carried out. Short to long-term shoreline changes and associated surface area variations have been assessed in GIS environment for the study coast, subdivided in nine coastal segments (S1-S9), by using 100-m regularly spaced tr...

Extratropical cyclones often produce extreme and hazardous weather conditions, such as high winds, heavy precipitation, blizzard conditions, and flooding, all of which have detrimental environmental/physical and socio-economic impacts. Furthermore, storm interaction with the ocean produces additional hazards, with major local impacts, including inu...

Some coastal communities in western Alaska have observed the occurrence of “slush-ice berms.” These features typically form during freeze-up, when ice crystal – laden water accumulates in piles on the shore. Slush-ice berms can protect towns from storm surge, and they can limit access to the water. Local observations from the communities of Gambell...

Powerful storms in the Bering and Chukchi Seas west of Alaska frequently bring high winds that drive positive and negative surge events (storm surges). Positive surge events can cause inundation of coastal regions, extending far inland in low-relief locations. A 10-year record (2004–2014) of water level data from Red Dog Dock located to the north o...

During the last century, Climatic Variability (CV) and change effects have generated a discernable impact on the world's coasts, most notably through changes in the frequency and/or magnitude of storm surges, flooding, coastal erosion and sea-level rise. This study explores CV signals and coastal responses along a 36 km stretch of coast in the Moli...

Full report available for free download from: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/earthsciences/pdf/assess/2016/Coastal_Assessment_FullReport.pdf

The Circumpolar Arctic Coastal Communities Observatory [now KnOwledge] Network (CACCON) functions as the Arctic Regional Engagement Network for Future Earth Coasts. In partnership with other Arctic knowledge networks and programs, including the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) and Arctic-COAST, CACCON promotes con...

Strong storms occur regularly over the ocean west of Alaska. These systems often loiter, generating persistent winds that can result in fully developed marine states that can maximize damage and hazard potential. Detailed analyses of storm events in terms of the resultant wave states are uncommon. This analysis examines the wave states associated w...

CACCON ("Catch-On") initiates a pan-Arctic network of community-engaged, multi-faceted and integrative coastal observatories and knowledge hubs. This ICARP-III initiative builds on the results of an initial scoping workshop in April 2014, with support from LOICZ (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone) and IASC (International Arctic Science Co...

A multi-scale hydroclimatic study of runoff generation in the Athabasca River watershed located in western Canada is presented. Mann-Kendall trend detection tests performed on hydrometric data for the lower Athabasca River (LAR) revealed predominantly significant (p<0.05) declines in annual and open-water season median/mean runoff indices over 1958...

Increases in the frequency and magnitude of extreme water levels and storm surges are correlated with known indices of climatic variability (CV), including the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the PacificDecadalOscillation (PDO), along some areas of the British Columbia coast. Since a shift to a positive PDO regime in 1977, the effects of EN...

Aerosol loading over Interior Alaska displays a strong seasonality, with pristine conditions generally prevailing during winter months. Long term aerosol research from the University of Alaska Fairbanks indicates that the period around April typically marks the beginning of the transition from winter to summer conditions. In April 2008, the NASA-sp...

Extreme events: the floods that displace us from our homes, the high waves that wash out coastal roads, or the toppling of trees and power poles from a passing storm. For locations around the Pacific Basin, where remote island chains sit perilously close to sea level and where rainfall is the primary source of water, questions arise concerning the...

Storm-petrels have been shown to use dimethyl sulfide (DMS) as a foraging cue, suggesting that this compound may be used to predict their distribution. We describe a new distribution model that employs machine learning software and geographic information systems to model storm-petrel distribution. We used environmental predictor variables that incl...

A bottom-mounted Recording Doppler Current Profiler was placed at an offshore location (depth of 34 m) in the southeast Chukchi Sea, Alaska, from July through December 2007 (UTC) with the objective of linking observed wave activity—wind-sea and swells—to their synoptic drivers. A total of 47 intervals of elevated wave state were recorded: 29 exceed...

Two bottom-mounted recording Doppler current profilers (RDCP) were deployed at nearshore locations (approximately 3 and 8 km offshore, in about 18 m water depth) in the southeast Chukchi Sea, Alaska, from October 2009 to September 2010 (UTC) with the goal of linking observed wave activity—wind-sea and swells—to their synoptic drivers. The northerly...

Arctic permafrost coasts are sensitive to changing climate. The lengthening open water season and the increasing open water area are likely to induce greater erosion and threaten community and industry infrastructure as well as dramatically change nutrient pathways in the near-shore zone. The shallow, mediterranean Arctic Ocean is likely to be stro...

More than 50 percent of Americans live in coastal watershed counties, a percentage that continues to increase (see section 1.3). In addition, the coast is home to the majority of major urban centers as well as major infrastructure such as seaports, airports, transportation routes, oil import and refining facilities, power plants, and military facil...

The Bering Strait region of western Alaska, as the single point of entry to the Arctic from the Pacific, represents an important focal point of activity that ranges from heavy transport operations, such bulk ore carriers as to Teck Alaska Red Dog mine, to Arctic tourism activities, and subsistence fishing and hunting carried out by local residents....

Arctic permafrost coasts are sensitive to changing climate. The lengthening open-water season and the increasing open-water area are likely to induce greater erosion and threaten community and industry infrastructure as well as dramatically change organic carbon and nutrient pathways in the nearshore zone. The shallow, mediterranean Arctic Ocean is...

The Athabasca River in northwestern Canada, the dominant inflow to Lake Athabasca and Peace-Athabasca Delta complex, continues to be influenced by multiple environmental stressors on its hydrology and aquatic ecology, including land-use change, climate variability/change, and growing industrial water demand. The Athabasca River presents a good oppo...

In situ observation of significant wave heights (SWHs) conducted from three fixed bottom-mounted Recording Doppler Current Profiler (RDCP) instruments in the south-eastern Chukchi Sea in 2007 and 2009 were compared with corresponding satellite observations from Envisat. A strong correlation (0.96) was indicated between satellite and in situ observa...

This study investigates the rate of erosion during the 1951-2006 period on the Bykovsky Peninsula, located north-east of the harbour town of Tiksi, north Siberia. Its coastline, which is characterized by the presence of ice-rich sediment (Ice Complex) and the vicinity of the Lena River Delta, retreated at a mean rate of 0.59 m/yr between 1951 and 2...

Arctic aerosol loading in interior Alaska displays a strong seasonality, with pristine conditions generally prevailing during winter months and increasing frequency of midlatitude air intrusions occurring in spring. By summer, local aerosol sources, like boreal forest fire smoke, may come into prominence. Long term aerosol research from the Univers...

A climatology of cold air outbreaks (CAOs) over North America is presented on the basis of a 50 year simulation of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). This climatology is compared to a similar CAO climatology based on 45 years (1957-2002) of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 40 Year Re-Analysis Project (ERA-40) da...

This paper compares two case studies in Alaska, one on commercial fishers of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region and the other on moose hunters of Interior Alaska, to identify how governance arrangements and management strategies enhance or limit people's ability to respond effectively to changing climatic and environmental conditions. The t...

This study investigates the rate of erosion during the 1951-2006 period on the Bykovsky Peninsula, located north-east of the harbour town of Tiksi, north Siberia. Its coastline, which is characterized by the presence of ice-rich sediment (Ice Complex) and the vicinity of the Lena River Delta, retreated at a mean rate of 0.59 m/yr between 1951 and 2...

Documenting the pacing and patterns of rapid ecosystem changes during our current interglacial is essential for identifying vulnerabilities to climate change. Here, we use statistical methods of changepoint detection to identify the timing and spatial distribution of both abrupt ecosystem and abrupt climate changes during the Holocene across a larg...

Sea-ice cover and its variability represent major atmospheric drivers. The impact of sea ice is exerted via its influence on albedo, fluxes of heat and moisture, and the radiation budget. Annual and seasonal sea-ice anomalies can be of sufficient magnitude to excite responses in the larger elements of atmospheric circulation, including the Rossby r...

The preliminary results of the problem of how to optimize coastal radar observations and moored observations in Alaska are discussed. We analyze dynamically induced correlations in the Kotzebue Sound and conduct their sensitivity analysis to optimize positions of a limited number of radars and moorings. Optimization of the sampling strategy is perf...

Previous studies have shown that sea-ice in the Sea of Okhotsk can be affected by local storms; in turn, the resultant sea-ice changes can affect the downstream development of storm tracks in the Pacific and possibly dampen a pre-existing North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) signal in late winter. In this paper, a storm tracking algorithm was applied t...

The North Pacific and Bering Sea regions represent loci of cyclogenesis and storm track activity. In this paper climatological properties of extratropical storms in the North Pacific/Bering Sea are presented based upon aggregate statistics of individual storm tracks calculated by means of a feature-tracking algorithm run using NCEP–NCAR reanalysis...

Wind setup (positive ocean surge) is a major damaging agent in the coastal zone. Its impact is enhanced in regions of shallow near-shore bathymetry such as characterize almost all areas of the Arctic marginal seas bordering the most susceptible coasts. Storms in many Arctic regions, although not possessing wind speeds as high as some of their south...

Sea-ice cover and its variability represent major atmospheric drivers. The impact of sea ice is exerted via its influence on albedo, fluxes of heat and moisture, and the radiation budget. Annual and seasonal sea-ice anomalies can be of sufficient magnitude to excite responses in the larger elements of atmospheric circulation, including the Rossby r...

Cold Air Outbreaks (CAOs) occur over North America, Europe, and Asia during the winter and often result in loss of life and extensive damage to crops, power lines, and personal property. Thus, it is important to understand variability in CAOs on inter-annual and decadal time scales, with an eye to potentially determining the extent to which they ar...

Alaska and surrounding coastal areas are prominent geographical features that are largely covered by sea ice on a seasonal basis over the ocean and exhibit sharply varied topography on land. The complex geographical features significantly complicate Alaska regional climate systems. Thus the representation of complex topography in high resolution mo...

Understanding the characteristics of storms that impact the Alaska region is of importance to emergency planning. The 5-7 October 1992 storm was a severe event which cost Nome, a town in Alaska, $6 million dollars. We will explore its characteristics with the aid of two established cyclone tracking schemes: the NOAA CPC current operational algorith...

The International Polar Year (IPY) was an international scientific program focused on intensive observations in the Arctic and Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009. As part of this effort, we present results of an NSF funded project, 'Pan-Arctic Studies of the Coupled Tropospheric, Stratospheric, and Mesospheric Circulation'. Planetary and gravi...

Due to the complex orography in Alaska, global climate models (GCMs) can not resolve local climate conditions and such information is increasing required to address the impacts of climate change. In this study we employ a regional climate model (MM5) to dynamically downscale coarse resolution GCM information. Although computationally intensive, dyn...

Our study examines swells and currents in the southeast Chukchi Sea during fall storms of 2007. The Arctic is inundated with storms during the fall season, which affect coastal erosion. Shishmaref, Alaska has recently been in the headline news regarding coastal erosion. To study these storms observational, a bottom- mounted Aanderaa RDCP600 was dep...

Rayleigh lidars at Chatanika, Alaska (65N, 147W) and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (67N, 51W) have measured the middle atmospheric density and temperature structure during the 2007-2008 winter. These lidars are part of the Arctic Observing Network during the fourth International Polar Year (IPY). The lidar observations have yielded measurements of mean...

Human system changes tied to the loss of sea ice and other arctic changes are have been observed across the entire range of human activities both in the arctic and elsewhere. The specific nature of a particular impact may be understood within a framework organizing human systems along three dimensions: time, space, and category. Three temporal scal...

A network of five Rayleigh lidars (i.e., Kuehlungsborn, Germany (54N, 12E), Chatanika, USA (65N, 147W), Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (67N, 51W), Andoya, Norway (69N, 16E), and Eureka, Canada (80N, 86W)) has been used to measure middle atmosphere temperature profiles through the 2007-2008 winter and spring. These measurements are being made as part of t...

This study investigates the pace of erosion during the 1951-2006 period on the Bykovsky Peninsula, located northeast of the harbour-town of Tiksi. The rates of erosion were retrieved using a wide array of imagery, ranging from airphotos to recent high resolution satellite imagery. The coastline, which is characterized by the presence of ice-rich se...

On 11 January 2006, Mount Augustine volcano in southern Alaska began erupting after 20-year repose. The Anchorage Forecast Office of the National Weather Service (NWS) issued an advisory on 28 January for Kodiak City. On 31 January, Alaska Airlines cancelled all flights to and from Anchorage after multiple advisories from the NWS for Anchorage and...

This paper presents climatological properties of Northern Hemisphere summer extratropical storm tracks using data extracted from an existing, relative-vorticity-based storm database. This database was constructed using the NCEP-NCAR ‘Reanalysis I’ data set from 1948 to 2002. Results contrasting summer and winter patterns for several storm parameter...

This paper presents climatological properties of Northern Hemisphere summer extratropical storm tracks using data extracted from an existing, relative-vorticity-based storm database. This database was constructed using the NCEPNCAR ‘Reanalysis I’ data set from 1948 to 2002. Results contrasting summer and winter patterns for several storm parameters...

The Arctic Boundary Layer (BL) is investigated in connection with filamentary propagating smoke plumes during a period of regional haze in the summer 2005, June 29-30. A description of dynamical exchange mechanisms leading to mixing processes taken place in the continental BL is given during a smoke episode from forest fires originated in the North...

Automated, "objective" storm classification methods work with selected meteorological variables to identify cyclonic systems. Typically a Lagrangian approach is used, whereby a storm is identified and then tracked throughout its life cycle. For weather-dependent applications, however, the action of a storm at a given point is important, e.g., coast...

High-latitude storm activity plays important roles at various time and space scales, ranging from the local scale, with for example, severe erosion suffered by coastal margins in Alaska and other arctic regions, to the continental scale, where for example storm corridor position and strength strongly affect the exchange of moisture and heat between...

Our study investigates methods of capturing wave-ice interactions in non-continuous sea-ice cover situations. Wave-ice interactions occur in the Arctic marginal seas where concentrations are less than 100% and individual ice floes and pancake ice are present. The concentration of ice floes directly affects the sea state by acting to filter wave ene...

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 34 (2007): L20706, doi:10.1029/2007GL031378. We compare daily data from the National Center for Atmospheric Researc...

On 11 January 2006, Mount Augustine volcano in southern Alaska began erupting after 20-year repose. The Anchorage Forecast Office of the National Weather Service (NWS) issued an advisory on 28 January for Kodiak City. On 31 January, Alaska Airlines cancelled all flights to and from Anchorage after multiple advisories from the NWS for Anchorage and...

As of 2003, the warmest year on record in Canada (and globally) was 1998. Extensive warming was observed over the Canadian Arctic during the summer of 1998. A collaborative, interdisciplinary project involving government, universities, and the private sector examined the effect of this unusual warmth on cryospheric conditions and documented the res...

Our study focuses on estimating return frequencies for extreme occurrences of on-shore wind events for the coastal and marine regions surrounding the towns of Barrow, Homer, and Nome in Alaska. Strong winds drive wind setup surges and wave action that inundate and damage coastal towns and infrastructure. This is of particular concern in Alaska, whe...

Understanding the characteristics and variability of extra-tropical storm tracks that impact the Alaskan region is of importance to emergency planning and hazard mitigation efforts. The Bering Sea exhibits a high concentration of cyclogenesis as well as storm tracks. In this research, some climatological properties of extra-tropical storm tracks fo...

The identification of a storm is not always straightforward. Depending on the application, a storm means different things to different research groups. Even within a discipline, definitions are not uniform but can utilize a variety of indicator parameters. In this paper, for the vicinity of the Chukchi Sea, storm counts per unit area, or storm dens...

Interpreting the postglacial climate history of the European continent using pollen data has proven difficult due in part to human modification of the landscape. Separating climate from human-caused changes in the vegetation requires a strategy for determining times of change across the entire region. We quantified transitions in the vegetation acr...

On October 19, 2004 the city of Nome, on the western Alaska coast, was hit by a storm that brought a 10.5 foot sea-level surge and large waves over the sea wall and into the town where significant damage resulted. This storm caused other flood and wave damage along the entire west coast of Alaska. Storm activity culminated over the Bering Sea just...

Aggretate and time series statistics for circum-Arctic 'high magnitude wind events' are presented over the period 1950-2004. Results are based on observational data obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC - NOAA) 'Integrated Surface Hourly Dataset' and, where available, the Environmental Working Group dataset for the Arctic Ocean. Agg...

Coastal change in the western Canadian Arctic is influenced by coastal morphology, relative sea-level trend and sea-ice and storm climates. The spatial variability of these factors tends to follow general east–west trends suggesting similar trends in coastal erosion hazard, processes and rates of coastal change. The spatial variability in the cause...

Storm event statistics for the open-water season (June–October) were extracted from the terrestrial-based observational record throughout the circumpolar coastal regime over the period 1950–2000. The Barents/Norwegian and Kara regions exhibited an active spring/quiet summer signature typical of the mid-latitudes. The Kara and Laptev Sea regions had...

Melt season is an important period in the cryoshpere. Its timing, duration, and intensity guide the response of many natural processes and system states, including ecological, hydrological, ground-thermal, glaciological, sea-ice, and snow cover. Capturing an overview of spatial-temporal patterns in melt-season parameters contributes to understandin...

Ocean wave activity is a major enviromental forcing agent of the ice-rich sediments that comprise large sections of the arctic coastal margins. While it is instructive to possess information about the wind regimes in these regions, direct application to geomorphological and engineering needs requires knowledge of the resultant wave-energy regimes....

1998 was the warmest year on record in Canada (and globally) with extensive summer warming over the Canadian Arctic. A collaborative project involving three Canadian federal government departments, nine Canadian universities, and the private sector, examined the effects of this unusual warmth on snow, ice and permafrost conditions, to document the...

Climatic variations during the past 10 000 and 1 000 years in the Canadian Arctic are recorded in a variety of proxy-climate records. Paleoclimates of the past 1000 years are interpreted from ice cores, lake sediments, and primarily tree rings. The past 500 years, between A.D. 1500 and A.D. 1850 were relatively cool, with coolest temperatures in th...

Use of gridded, model-based data sets of climatic parameters (often termed "reanalysis projects") to drive climate, ocean, and terrestrial/cryosphere process models is widespread. In this paper are presented results from work in which 6-hourly temperature and wind data from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis project are related to in situ data throughout the...

In the Canadian high Arctic patterns of temperature are poorly resolved at the mesoscale. This issue is addressed using a model to estimate mean summer surface air temperature at high spatial resolution. The effects on temperature of site elevation and coastal proximity were selected for parameterization. The spatial basis is a 1-km resolution digi...

The physical and chemical limnology of 204 lakes from across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago was examined. Mean summer air temperature did not correlate well with lake chlorophyll levels due to the predominance of ultra-oligotrophic hard-water lakes located in a polar climate. Local geology influences ion budgets and is an important factor in deter...

Cited By (since 1996):51, Export Date: 6 June 2013, Source: Scopus, :doi 10.1029/2000GB001286, Language of Original Document: English, Correspondence Address: Gajewski, K.; Lab. of Paleoclimatology/Climatology, Department of Geography, University of Ottawa, 165 Waller Street, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada; email: gajewski@aixl.uottawa.ca, References:...

There is debate concerning the spatial extent and magnitude of the recently identified 1500 yr climate oscillation. Existing evidence is largely restricted to the North Atlantic and adjacent landmasses. The spatial extent, magnitude, and effects of these climate variations within the terrestrial environment during the Holocene have not been establi...

A set of nonstandard climate data from the Canadian High Arctic is made available. This consists of 20 yr (1974-93) of surface-based climate observations gathered at short-term field research camps supported by the Polar Continental Shelf Project, a Canadian federal agency responsible for Arctic research support. These data were gathered in the spr...

In the Canadian High Arctic general patterns of temperature are poorly resolved at the meso-scale. This project addressed this issue in three stages. In the first stage a data set of non-standard weather observations was assembled and quality controlled The data set possessed approximately 58000 observations, including dry-bulb temperature, wind, v...

Meteorological data collected over six years (June 1988-March 1994) at the Hot Weather Creek automatic weather station on Fosheim Peninsula are presented. Preliminary results are discussed. Metadata and a list of data and value-added data are also provided. Conditions at this inland site and at three stations in the Sawtooth Range are compared with...

Results are presented from a limited test of a model that predicts July mean surface-air temperatures at high spatial resolution using upper-air data from Atmospheric Environment Service stations and a digital representation of topography. Data from the Polar Continental Shelf Project database of nonstandard climate observations were used to assess...

Many pollen diagrams are available from across Europe documenting the late glacial and postglacial vegetation succession. Due to the long history of human impact, quantifying the climate history of the region has been problematic. We analysed times of change in European pollen data from the European Pollen Database (EPD). We used a mixture model to...

One method to synthesize proxy-climate records is to reconstruct the atmospheric circulation patterns. We performed an annually resolved reconstruction of July mean sea level pressure for the northern hemisphere for the past millennium using a network of tree-ring and ice-core data. Tree ring data from the northern hemisphere boreal and temperate b...