Temperature Trends In Mexico: Enhancing Risk Assessment For Mining Operations Using Statistical Analysis
Presenter: Claire Acke P11
Co-Author(s): Lourdes Mendoza Fierro, Sahar Mohsenzadeh Karimi, Christopher L. Castro, Hsin-I Chang, Eylon Shamir, Norman Pelak
Advisor(s): Christopher Castro
1Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences
The latest climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects a future increase in temperature and precipitation over Mexico. These changes, specifically temperature, are of particular concern to companies operating mines due to the strong economic income they bring to the country. Increasing temperatures can lead to increased water usage on-site, along with increased health risk to workers. For these reasons, mining companies have begun to incorporate climate reports into their risk management operations. These reports offer a great starting point but are very broad due to the resolution of Global Climate Models (GCMs). For more detailed insight of conditions at a particular site, an Inverse Distance Weight (IDW) method is applied by using three surrounding Comisión Nacional del Agua (CONAGUA) weather stations. These calculated values are then compared with NASA’s DayMet dataset. Statistical analysis can then be performed and can be used to create a Weather Generator (WG) that produces random, realistic weather scenarios over the region of interest. This more detailed analysis gives mining companies more accurate projections for their particular mining sites, allowing them to adapt to future conditions.