Engineering Climate Datasets

Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Files: Includes the latest version of short-duration rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) statistics in the form of tables and graphs with accompanying documentation for various locations across Canada. Current IDF files can be accessed through our station finder application or downloaded for each province and territory across Canada. In addition, historical versions of IDF files are also available for download. Updates of IDF files are provided approximately every two years depending on the availability of data.

Canadian Weather Energy and Engineering Datasets (CWEEDS): FTP download This dataset has been updated with the most recent changes made in July 2020. There are now files for 564 Canadian locations compared to 492 in the 2016 release. The period has been extended three years to 2017. There are 72 new locations at northern sites incorporating solar data in a gridded data set derived from polar-orbiting meteorological satellites, developed in a cooperative project involving Natural Resources Canada, SUNY (the State University of New York), and NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautical and Space Administration). All 95 locations north of 58° N in this release now incorporate solar data from this new northern gridded solar data set. Previously, the 23 northern locations incorporated solar radiation estimated by the MAC3 cloud-layer model described in the 2016 release notes below.

The dataset released in 2016 includes 492 Canadian locations with at least 10 years of data for the period between 1998 and 2014. This 2016 version of the CWEEDS files has several different characteristics compared to the previous major release of CWEEDS files from Environment Canada in 2005. For locations where solar irradiance observations are not available (the vast majority), solar values are now primarily based on satellite-derived solar estimates using methods developed at SUNY (State University of New York) and provided to Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada by Clean Power Research. SUNY data sets are available at about 10 km grid spacing for 1998-2014 for all of Canada south of 58° N. Previously, the CWEEDS solar irradiance fields were primarily based on the MAC3 model estimates using sky condition and cloud layer type and cloud amount observations from 24/7 staffed weather stations. The use of SUNY data allows the use of many stations, especially autostations, that would otherwise not be suitable for use in CWEEDS files owing to lack of cloud observations for estimating solar irradiance by the MAC3 model.

Canadian Weather Year for Energy Calculation (CWEC): FTP download 564 datasets created by joining twelve Typical Meteorological Months selected from a database of up to 30 years of CWEEDS hourly data. The months are chosen by statistically comparing individual monthly means with long-term monthly means for daily total global radiation, mean, minimum and maximum dry bulb temperature, mean, minimum and maximum dew point temperature, and mean and maximum wind speed.

For more information please contact the Engineering Climate Services Unit at scg-ecs@ec.gc.ca.