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Climate Indices – A View of Changing Living Conditions (2001)

Climate Indices – A View of Changing Living Conditions. The Climate Severity Index (CSI) was developed in 1984 to measure and compare climate comfort/discomfort on humans across the full range of Canadian climatic zones. Other impacts on such climate sensitive areas as ecologies and economies (tourism, industry) are not included in the index.

Climate Indices – A View of Changing Living Conditions. The Climate Severity Index (CSI) was developed in 1984 to measure and compare climate comfort/discomfort on humans across the full range of Canadian climatic zones. Other impacts on such climate sensitive areas as ecologies and economies (tourism, industry) are not included in the index. This present CCAF study examined the variability of the CSI during the period of 1953-1995, and examined CSI trends in the future using data and outputs of a Canadian Global Circulation Model (CGCM1). The CSI combines winter and summer discomfort factors (half the weight), and includes psychological, hazard and mobility factors (the other half weight). Some components of the CSI are not amenable to analysis for future trends since they are not available as GCM model outputs; “fog” for example.

The CSI is very sensitive to temperature. So, with measured increases in past mean temperature, and predicted increases in future mean temperature, the project confirms that, not surprisingly, the CSI “improves” with time, both in the past and future, for specific locations in Canada. Examples are: the Ottawa CSI for 2025 would approach that of the 1955 CSI for Toronto; the Whitehorse CSI for 2025 would approach that of the 1955 CSI for Calgary; etc. The CSI, because of its aggregation of winter discomfort with summer discomfort, does not discriminate seasonal effects very well (e.g. winter temperatures rise, improving the Index, while summer temperatures also rise giving a deterioration of the Index at any one site). It is recommended that, if readers wish to better appreciate winter/summer trends, they should visit the website > where the various winter and summer sub-indices of the CSI are provided in detail.

One participant reported that he had undertaken a similar index analysis of climate change for North America with tourism being the main driver of this Index, and he offered to share the results of the study with other researchers.

Information dated October 26th, 2001 and found here

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