DONATE

IAHR Document Library


« Back to Library Homepage « Proceedings of the 25th IAHR International Symposium on Ice ...

Will There Be an Ice Bridge This Winter? Predicting Spatio-Temporal Freeze-up Patterns Along the Yukon River, Canada

Author(s): Benoit Turcotte

Linked Author(s):

Keywords:

Abstract: The City of Dawson, located is central Yukon, northwestern Canada, was founded at the end of the 1890s during the Klondike Gold Rush. For decades, residents of Dawson and West Dawson were able to cross the thick Yukon River ice cover every winter, from December to April. However, in the fall of 2013, a persistent open water lead in front of town prevented the preparation and certification of an ice bridge by the department of Highways and Public Works, despite a normal winter coldness (more than 3000 cumulated degree-days of freezing). Similar freeze-up scenarios occurred again during winters 2016-17 to 2018-19, when hundreds of thousands of (Canadian) dollars were spent to promote the formation of an ice cover at the usual ice bridge location. Satellite images combined with weather and hydrometric data were used to create a model that would predict freeze-up timing and patterns on the Yukon River during the fall of 2019. Results were partially successful, confirming that more information needs to be analyzed and suggesting that some residual uncertainty would probably prevent the model from becoming perfectly accurate, especially in a context of evolving climate and morphology. This work presents river ice formation observations on 300 km of the Yukon River, proposes a hypothesis on the potential cause of the change in freeze-up dynamics at Dawson in 201314, describes the empirical freeze-up model, and discusses potential research avenues and adaptation measures to improve the safe crossing of people and vehicles on the Yukon River during winter.

DOI:

Year: 2020

Copyright © 2024 International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research. All rights reserved. | Terms and Conditions