TO2015 Pan and Parapan American Games Science Showcase Research

The Pan and Parapan American Games are a regional international summer sporting event, staged every 4 years in the year prior to the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. The 2015 Games were awarded to Canada on November 6, 2009, by the Pan American Sports Organization. The XVII Pan American Games and the V Parapan American Games were held in Toronto, Canada, from July 10–26, 2015, and from August 7–15, 2015, respectively. Canada welcomed the 40 other countries/nations of the Americas to Toronto and the municipalities of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Area in Ontario where the summer sports events of the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games were hosted.

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) mission and mandate for the TO2015 Games was to provide essential services for enhanced weather monitoring and forecasting and for local-level preparedness activities. The key objectives were to enhance public safety and decision making by: issuing weather warnings; forecasting weather conditions; supporting critical weather sensitive government services; and monitoring atmospheric conditions.

The funding received by ECCC was used to provide state-of-the-art, 24/7, dedicated, venue-specific weather services during the Games (i.e., 24 hours per day, 7 days per week).

Although ECCC’s mandate for the Games was to provide venue-specific forecasts and alerts, various ongoing research and development activities were aligned to take advantage of the unique opportunities provided by the Games. ECCC’s research showcase for the Games leveraged our state-of-the-art science and technologies. The goal was two-fold: support ECCC’s operations during the Games, and learn from the research and development to make a great meteorological service even better.

ECCC showcased a number of new technologies and instruments, which are described in the following sections. The research instrument platforms provided observations that supplemented the automated land- and marine-based Mesonet. All available observations were used to increase our understanding of meteorological and air quality science, particularly over an urban environment. ECCC will use this new scientific information to improve the accuracy and lead time of its alerts.