Forecasts across four million square miles of territory

Vaisala renews Canada's synoptic upper-air observation network

Environment Canada is home to Meteorological Services Canada (MSC), the country's weather service. Formed 136 years ago, MSC is responsible for observing and providing forecasts of the weather across the country's almost four million square miles of territory stretching from the US border to the south to above the Arctic circle in the North and from the Atlantic provinces in the East to the coastal mountains of British Columbia in the West.

Network of thirty-one stations

An important component of MSC's national observation program is its upper-air network of thirty-one stations. One of these stations, located in Whitehorse, Yukon, operates a Vaisala AUTOSONDE for automated and unattended soundings twice per day for up to twelve days before requiring re-loading. This AUTOSONDE has been operating since 1997, and has been upgraded to use Vaisala's new RS92 family of radiosondes.

At the thirty other upper-air stations, automatic soundings are carried out with manned balloon launches. These stations have relied on the Vaisala DigiCORA® Sounding System MW15 since the early 1990s, originally with Vaisala Radiosondes RS80 and later upgraded to use the Vaisala Radiosondes RS92.

Twenty-seven of these thirty sites are operated by contracted employees at government-owned facilities. These upper-air stations and, especially, the high arctic stations of Alert, Eureka, and Resolute Bay, pose unique challenges due to the remoteness of their location and limited supply possibilities. MSC benefits from the high reliability of the Vaisala equipment and services to keep the network at maximum uptime.

Reliability brings savings

In 2006 MSC published a tender to replace its network with newer systems to maintain its required operational uptime well into the future.

As a result of this selective process, MSC awarded a contract to Vaisala in July 2007. The contract covers the supply of thirty-five Vaisala DigiCORA® Sounding Systems MW31 and 150,000 radiosondes, including documentation, French and English operation, training, and other services over the next ten years. Options are included for additional ground systems, radiosondes, spare parts, and services throughout the contract period, which ends on March 31, 2017.