Projected Climate Change and Variability and Their Impact on the Canadian Rocky Mountains - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 415

sustainable in the face of complex dynamic nature of climate change and
large uncertainties associated with regional climate change projections.
Conclusion
The temporal and spatial density of observations in mountain regions is
inadequate to describe accurately the rapid changes in meteorological
variables (such as temperature and precipitation) that would occur in a
complex topography with steep slopes. Inadequacies of the sparse and
scattered observational stations become even more acute when we realize
that there is a potential vertical gradient in the nature of the meteorological
response to climate change. Many of the existing meteorological stations
are few and far in between, and are mostly located in the mountain valleys.
Simulating climate change and variability in mountainous regions is
a challenging task for climate scientists. Complexity of the mountainous
topography and surface characteristics can lead to a large spatial and
temporal variability in climatic regimes and responses. There have only
been a few model simulations to examine how mountain regions will
respond to climate change, due mainly to the fact that the present global
and regional climate models do not possess suffi ciently adequate spatial
resolution to resolve the topographical details of the mountains, as well
as the detailed characteristics of the surface, such as various ecosystems
(vegetation, snow/ice, etc.), that are needed to properly represent such
important feedback mechanisms as snow/ice albedo feedback. Simulating
the details of the existing mountain climate requires a signifi cantly more
computation power and resource than is presently available. Also, there
are not enough observational data to verify with confi dence any model
simulation output.
However, understanding how climate in mountain regions will change
with global warming is important because of its signifi cant impact on
environment (including humans) not just within the mountains, but also
on lowlands downstream where human population and socio-economic
activities are concentrated. Over 50% of the rivers in the world originate
from glaciers in mountain regions. It has been suggested that 30 to 50% of
the existing mountain glacier mass worldwide could disappear by 2100.
In the Canadian Rockies, three major rivers (Fraser River, Columbia River
and Saskatchewan River) provide freshwater to millions of Canadians for
domestic, agricultural, industrial and power generation usage, as well as for
tourism. We showed results from two case studies, one from the Cline River
watershed in western Alberta and another one from the Okanagan River
watershed in the interior British Columbia. In both of these cases, impact
of climate change on the seasonal variation of streamfl ow is important in
agriculture and power generation, as well as in tourism. The forest industry