Derek Neary
Northern News Services

FORT SIMPSON (Feb 26/99) - The water cycles of the Mackenzie basin are under close scrutiny these days.

The Mackenzie GEWEX Study or "MAGS" (GEWEX standing for Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment) is a collaborative effort among several universities and government laboratories.

The main purpose of MAGS, a four-year project that began last year, is to provide the scientific techniques which can be used to predict the future climate and hydrology, according to Dr. Geoff Strong, MAGS secretariat/co-ordinator, based in Saskatoon, Sask.

MAGS is part of a larger global effort with the same objective in mind, he noted.

Over the past 50 years, the mean annual temperature trend in the Mackenzie Basin region has indicated a warming of 1.8 C, Strong said. That may not sound like much to the layperson, but it is significant, he suggested. "Man-induced" climate change through greenhouse gases are well documented and one possible reason for the warming, said Strong. Unfortunately, however, the complexities of nature make it difficult to demonstrate this theory, especially in the short term. Natural variations in weather cycles and in climate can also cause both short and long-term temperature variations of about the same magnitude. Therefore, more research is needed, he said.

Bob Kochtubajda, a logistics co-ordinator based in Edmonton, explained, "In particular, we are trying to understand the energy and water cycles within the basin. We're looking at all of those processes and eventually hoping to improve our modelling capabilities as well."

Several monitoring sites have been established in the Mackenzie region, including sites at Fort Good Hope, Lindberg landing, Lower Carp Lake and near Inuvik. At the Fort Simpson airport a weather radar station is being utilized and upper air sampling is also being done. Extra water measurements, temperature, precipitation, air pressure and relative humidity readings are being taken and studied intensely.

The monitoring stations have been equipped with satellite transmitters that transmit the data back to the Environment Canada office in Edmonton on an hourly basis, according to Kochtubajda. The information is then disseminated across the country for the project researchers and for weather forecasting purposes, he said.

Funding for the project has been obtained through Environment Canada and through a National Science and Engineering Research grant.

Strong said there are definitely particular concerns involved with the warming climate. The main difference between natural climate variability and the potential for greenhouse warming is the "rate of change." With natural climate warming or cooling, changes occur over a long enough period that natural vegetation and wildlife have many generations to evolve and/or migrate with the change, he explained. The potential danger with greenhouse warming is that the major change could take place over several decades, and may not necessarily be reversible, he said.

"We don't know that this will take place, but there is that suspicion," he said. "What would happen, for example, to Canada's rather large area of boreal forest? How would it respond to several degrees of warming? What affect would melting of ice-rich permafrost have, or reduced lake or river ice thickness or duration? How would wildlife, and their migration patterns, adjust to those changes?"

Strong said it is suspected that the temperature increases noted for the past 50-plus years may be the first signal of CO2-induced greenhouse warming, but even 100 years of records are inadequate for positive verification. The only way to provide proof and be able to also provide a reasonable prediction for the future, is to improve numerical (computer-produced) climate models through research.