ClimateData.ca has launched a new custom shapefile analysis feature, introducing for the first time the ability to download spatially averaged climate data for a user-defined region. Users can now upload their own geographic boundaries and receive a single area-averaged climate summary for that shape.
Many climate-related decisions are made for areas that do not align with standard administrative boundaries. Whether planning infrastructure upgrades, assessing environmental risks, or supporting community adaptation, practitioners often work with custom study areas such as ecological regions, municipal districts, flood zones, or service areas. This new tool is designed to support those needs by enabling users to generate climate summaries for their own defined regions.
The Canadian Centre for Climate Services’ Support Desk, the team that helps manage custom requests and inquiries made through ClimateData.ca’s Support Page, regularly receives requests for climate data linked to custom regions such as flood mapping boundaries, provincial planning areas, wildlife habitats, and Canadian climate regions (see Box 1). Until now, responding to these requests often required additional Geographic Information System (GIS) processing outside the platform.
Box 1: More real-world applications of custom shapefile extraction
The ClimateData.ca Support Desk is the user support team at the Canadian Centre for Climate Services. They respond to questions submitted through ClimateData.ca and help users find, interpret, and apply climate data in their context. Over time, one consistent theme has come up: many users already have a boundary they work with, but it doesn’t match the standard options. Custom shapefile extraction is designed for these practical situations, when the question is “what do the projections look like for this exact area?”
Common examples include:
Figure 1: Example of how climate information averaged across a large area (in this case, Waterton Lakes National Park) can support education, training, and communications by providing a clear, high-level summary of projected change. As noted in these summaries, area-wide averages can mask important local variation (e.g., differences across ecosystems, elevation, or proximity to water), so they are best used for orientation and awareness-building and should not replace location-specific analysis for detailed planning or design. This type of climate summary has previously been used internally by Parks Canada to raise awareness of climate-related risks and to inform early-stage thinking on future climate adaptation priorities and planning. Read more about this project.
By enabling users to analyze climate projections within their own defined regions, this tool improves the relevance of climate information for local decision-making, supports evidence-based adaptation and design, and reduces the need for external spatial analysis workflows.
The Download page now includes a new option to select “Upload Custom Shapefile”. When this option is selected, users are prompted to upload a zipped shapefile to generate spatially averaged climate data for their selected area. After choosing the relevant dataset, variable, and model settings, users submit a request and receive their results by email.
Previously, the Download Tool returned separate values for each individual grid cell when users manually selected multiple grid points. It did not calculate an average across the selected cells. With the shapefile workflow, ClimateData.ca now calculates and returns a single spatially averaged value representing the entire uploaded region.
At this stage, spatial averaging is only available through the shapefile upload option. Users who require spatially averaged results must upload a shapefile representing their area of interest.
This functionality is being introduced in phases to the other prescribed area definitions (e.g., watershed, census subdivision, etc.) as ClimateData.ca continues to evolve. For the initial release, the shapefile upload option is available only for selected variables and indices that support customization (e.g., metrics based on threshold values such as the number of days above a specified temperature). This phased approach reflects system capacity considerations and allows the feature to be rolled out in a stable and reliable manner. Additional datasets and analysis options may be added to future updates.
As noted in Box 1, spatially averaged climate data are most appropriate for high-level analysis, training, and communication purposes. When applied to very large or geographically diverse regions, averages can mask important local variation in climate conditions. For detailed design, impact assessment, or site-specific planning, users are encouraged to work with smaller regions or location-based data that better reflects local conditions. To support appropriate use and ensure reliable processing, shapefiles uploaded to ClimateData.ca must represent areas smaller than 500,000 km².
This initial release unlocks the custom shapefile feature for selected variables in the Download section of ClimateData.ca only. These include core climate projection variables commonly used in planning and assessment, including:
Future updates are expected to expand this capability for more datasets and variables.
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This project was undertaken with the support of:
