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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Climate Change and its Potential Impact on Winter-Road Maintenance: Temporal Trends in Hazardous Temperature Days in the United States and Canada

Abstract:

Two variables derived from minimum and maximum air temperatures are used here in order to evaluate changes in winter-road maintenance over North America. Over North America, there are differential trends of hazard days across the continent while there is a general decrease in the numbers of below-freezing days over the period 1948-2002. As climatic change takes place and the spatial distribution of hazard and below-freezing days changes, the types and intensity of winter-road maintenance activities will change. Allocation of resources and personnel need to be evaluated accordingly. By analyzing the recent 55 winter seasons of air-temperature data for the U.S. and Canada, the spatial distribution and trends of variables relevant to winter-road maintenance are illustrated. The paper concludes by discussing a number of possible impacts of climate change on winter-road maintenance in the future.

Source(s):

Transportation Research Board (TRB) 85th Annual Meeting, Indiana University. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2006

Author:

Sato, Robeson

Keywords:


Winter maintenance
Climate/Season

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