The problem was to explain effects of mountain terrain, the Canadian Cordillera, on distributions of precipitation and temperature. Techniques from several fields of meteorology were blended with modern data processing in an attempt to overcome the sparseness and non-representativeness of weather observations. Atmospheric characteristics over British Columbia were found to be sharply differentiated by the direction of the flow at the 700 millibar level. Linearized two-dimensional mountain airflow theory was combined with relevant atmospheric characteristics to derive simple models of precipitation distributions over mountain ranges. These models were used to supplement observations to obtain improved charts of precipitation over the southern half of British Columbia. Altitudinal variation, and other characteristics of the distributions of precipitation and temperature not hitherto available were elucidated. The relationships obtained between atmospheric characteristics and observed weather suggest that it may be practicable and economical to observe the climate of sparsely settled mountainous areas using relatively few weather stations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.113563 |
| Date | January 1961 |
| Creators | Walker, Edward. R. |
| Contributors | Hare, F. (Supervisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy. (Department of Health Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: NNNNNNNNN, Theses scanned by McGill Library. |
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