https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2922

Rafat, A., (2026) Monitoring and modelling lake ice and ice road conditions in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2922.
https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2922

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to lake ice, and by extension to ice roads. Ice roads are critical infrastructure for northern communities. They enable the resupply of remote communities and stimulate northern economic development through natural resource development. Through this research, the understanding of subarctic lake ice and ice road evolution in the Northwest Territories (NWT) was advanced, and insights translated into an improved lake ice model. By integrating extensive field observations with numerical modelling, the impacts of climate change and weather variability on lake ice and ice roads were quantified. These results provide decision-makers with the knowledge needed to support science-driven public policy and infrastructure investment decisions in northern cold regions. This research comprised three components: (1) establishing a network of in-situ ice sensors across the NWT to understand microscale interactions between air, snow, ice, and water, (2) thoroughly examining, identifying limitations, and providing recommendations for improving two commonly used lake ice models, and (3) leveraging new insights of air-snow-ice-water interactions, and proposed recommendations, to develop an improved lake ice model with explicit ice road modelling capabilities. Field observations were collected at 15-minute intervals between December 2021- January 2026 spanning 9 sites in the NWT. A floating research station was designed and constructed in a small subarctic lake to address limitations in data collection during shoulder seasons. Examination of inter-annual and inter-site variability in ice evolution yielded new insights into key controls and mechanisms of ice freeze-up, early winter ice growth, melt and deterioration and lake morphological effects. Empirical relationships were developed to predict early winter conditions using local air temperature and snowfall.  An energy balance was used to develop an ice melt collapse mechanism for simulating mechanical breakage and to propose improvements to melt season albedo schemes. These insights highlighted limitations of the Canadian Lake Ice Model (CLIMo) and the High-Resolution Snow and Ice Model (HIGHTSI), identified through a critical examination of model parameterization schemes. These advances were consolidated and utilized to greatly extend CLIMo into an improved, ice-road informed model, CLIMo-Ice Road (CLIMo-IR). The model was calibrated and validated against observational data across all sites and years and demonstrated strong performance. CLIMo-IR was then applied in a case study to examine the impacts of future climate change on ice road conditions within Canada’s proposed Arctic Economic and Security Corridor (AESC) in the NWT and Nunavut. Projections showed that despite significant reductions in ice road durations, later ice road opening dates, and earlier closing dates, under defined operational thresholds and maintenance regimes, ice roads remain largely resilient within the AESC through to 2075.

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https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4084&context=etd