Weather forecasts and warnings to Canadians are being improved through a $134 million investment from the Harper Government.
The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment, Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council, announced earlier this month that Canadians will “have access to more reliable and accurate weather forecasts based on the most modern technology available,” read a press release from Environment Canada.
The Harper Government has agreed to spend $134 million, allowing Environment Canada to “make significant upgrades to the monitoring networks and to the weather warning systems.”
According to Environment Canada, the weather service will be able to communicate weather warnings more accurately and with more lead-time.
Canadians in the business, agriculture, tourism and transportation sectors will benefit from the upgrades.
The technology includes weather radars, land-based and marine surface weather and climate stations as well as satellites.
Statistics
Environment Canada currently has radars and sensors in position to detect and predict weather.
These include:
• 31 weather radars
• 84 lighting detector sensors
• 125 fixed buoys and automatic marine stations installed on ships
• 31 stations for launching balloon-borne observations
• Satellite data
• 1,200 surface weather climate stations
On average, Environment Canada releases 1.5 million weather forecasts, 15,000 severe weather warnings, 500,000 aviation forecasts and 200,000 marine, ice and sea forecasts each year.
