Mesoscale boundaries have an important influence on mesoscale weather. They can trigger, enhance or inhibit convections and severe weather. They are also indicators of shifts in wind speed and direction, temperature and relative humidity, and can affect air quality and heat indices. Around the Great Lakes, it has been observed that mesoscale boundaries are prevalent and can have complex interactions between each other.
A mesoscale boundary is the interface between two air masses for weather phenomenon on a scale of 5km to 100km. Mesoscale boundaries are generally associated with wind and differences in temperature, pressure and relative humidity.
A database was created containing analysis of mesoscale boundaries provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada research meteorologists. The data were collected between 2001 to 2015 around the Great Lakes and surrounding regions during four different field campaigns: ELBOW (2001), BAQS-MET (2007), RSD (2008-2014) and PANAM (2015). The types of boundaries that were collected were lake and land breeze fronts, outflow boundaries, as well as merged and other boundaries.
The data are stored annually in GeoJSON format and shapefiles. A geodatabase containing all the boundaries coordinates and properties is also included. A CSV file summarizes all the properties of the boundaries, but does not include any geometric information.