NAVIGATION CONTEXT

Navigation

Navigation gives an access to a selection of useful data to support navigation activities on the St. Lawrence River and Gulf.

The types of data that are currently available on the application  are:

  • Surface currents of the St. Lawrence River, Estuary and Gulf. Surface current forecasts are accessed through the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). For additional information on this data source. The spatial resolution from Trois-Rivières to Rimouski is 400 meters, while the resolution of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is 5 km. For more information on this data source, please click here.

**Notes :

        1. In the Quebec City region, surface currents reverse times are not well reproduced by the current model. They arrive about an hour later in the app than in reality. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is working to document this discrepancy. A new current model is also being developped which will better reproduce the observations.
        2. An offset of about 3km to the west and 9km to the south had to be applied to the CHS gulf surface currents dataset for them to be displayed correctly on the screen.
  • Surface currents between Montreal and Trois-Rivières:
    Current data for this region comes from the Operational Hydrodynamic Simulation (OPHS) of the Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC). This model performs simulations and numerical analysis for parameters of interest concerning the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries. It uses observations of flows and water levels measured between 6:00 p.m. UTC the day before and 6:00 p.m. UTC the day the analysis is produced. The result of the simulation is an average of the previous day. The data are therefore not predictions. However, given the weak influence of the tides on this region, these data remain relevant up to 4 days in the future, and up to 2 days during the spring flood period.
    It should be noted that, for technical reasons, the results of the simulations were also spatially averaged. The current grid displayed here has a resolution of 100m.
    For more details about this model, please see the following link.
  • Wind predictions. Wind predictions are provided by the High Resolution Deterministic Prediction System (HRDPS) and has a resolution of 2.5km. For more information about this model, please click here.
  • Water Level Data. Water level and tide data are provided by the CHS of DFO. Please click here for more information about this service.
  • Atmospheric data. These observations are provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) weather stations. ** Please note that we currently only support the stations in the province of Quebec. Stations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence region will soon be available.
  • Marine Forecasts. This marine forecast service is provided by ECCC. It gives access to observations and forecasts of weather, wind, waves and visibility conditions. It also issues warnings for particular weather events such as strong winds or storms. Please visit this website for more information.