Ice information

Routing management support model

The Oceanic Forecast for the St. Lawrence Gulf and the St. Lawrence  Estuary are issued under the Operational Oceanography Program by the personnal of the Physical modeling section of the Oceanic Sciences,  Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The surface currents, sea ice and water temperature forecast for the St. Lawrence  are extracted from a three-dimentional model computing the oceanic circulation, under the influence of tides, the St. Lawrence river runoff, the atmospheric forcing, and the sea ice drift, growth and melt. The model is validated under a series of scientific and operational research and development programs within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The validation process was done against a number of oceanographic observations including currents, water temperature and salinity, and sea ice drift, concentration and thickness.

The input data to the model are the following:

• Tidal elevation at Cabot and Belle Isle Straits;
• Forecast of fresh water runoff at Québec City;
• Meteorological forecast issued from the GEM model of the Canadian Meteorological Centre, Meteorological Service of Canada, which includes wind, air temperature, cloud cover and relative humidity;
• Ice observation, integrated in daily ice charts from the Canadian Ice Service, Environnement Canada;
• And finally, mariners and ice pilots provide on a regular basis, ice conditions and sea state observations along their route. This information is also used for the validation of the model results.