- Ph. D. 2015
Civil Engineering
University of Calgary
- Diploma 2011
Meteorology
University of British Columbia
- B. A. Sc. 2008
Engineering Physics
Queen's University
You can reach Simon at simon_horton@sfu.ca.
Meet Simon
Simon grew up in Ontario playing hockey, canoeing, and obsessed with drawing maps. After moving out west, his passions shifted to mountain sports and he came upon a fortunate opportunity to learn about snow and avalanches from Bruce Jamieson at the University of Calgary. He currently work as the research officer and a senior forecaster at Avalanche Canada and continues his research as an associate with SFU. He is thankful for the many great mentors and opportunities he has had up to this point, and hopes to apply his research to benefit everyone who works and plays in the mountains.
Simon's research
Simon’s research focuses on understanding patterns in weather, snowpack, and avalanche conditions. Despite the complexity and variability across the vast mountains of Canada, there are also broad patterns that span across ranges. By working with numerical weather and snowpack models, as well as field observations, Simon’s goal is to help draw out these patterns to help forecasters understand avalanche hazards. In recent years, he has been excited to see this research gradually be adopted by avalanche practitioners.
Characterizing snow instability with avalanche problem types derived from snow cover simulations
Clustering simulated snow profiles to form avalanche forecast regions
A quantitative module of avalanche hazard—comparing forecaster assessments of storm and persistent slab avalanche problems with information derived from distributed snowpack simulations
A clustering technique to identify spatial patterns in snow cover model output
Adopting snowpack models into an operational forecasting program: Successes, challenges, and future outlook
Is it a problem? Takeaways from research into the use an effectiveness of avalanche problems
A large-scale validation of snowpack simulations in support of avalanche forecasting focusing on critical layers
Using snow depth observation to provide insight into the quality of regional-scale snowpack simulations for avalanche forecasting
Examining the operational use of avalanche problems with decision trees and model-generated weather and snowpack variables
Snow profile alignment and similarity assessment for aggregating, clustering, and evaluating of snowpack model output for avalanche forecasting
Enhancing the operational value of snowpack models with visualization design principles
Exploring regional snowpack patterns with gridded models
Click here for a full listing of SARP publications.
sarp.snowprofile.alignment: Snow Profile Alignment, Aggregation, and Clustering
sarp.snowprofile: Snow Profile Analysis for Snowpack and Avalanche Research
Click here for a full listing of SARP software packages.
Simon Horton & Pascal Haegeli
Research on avalanche problems: Where do we go next to improve hazard assessments?
2023 CAA Spring Meetings
Simon Horton, Florian Herla & Pascal Haegeli
Dynamically aggregating avalanche forecast regions based on simulated snow profiles
2022 AGU Fall Meeting
Simon Horton & Florian Herla
Latest advances in snowpack modelling—Operational forecasting tools and the research behind them
2022 CAA Spring Meetings
Simon Horton
Anticipating persistent problems in coastal areas – Lessons from operational snowpack modelling this season
2021 CAA Spring Meetings
Simon Horton
Snow modeling 101 and applications for practitioners
2020 CSAW
Simon Horton
Snow modeling 101 and applications for practitioners – Question period
2020 CSAW
Simon Horton
What if you could dig two thousand pits a day?
2019 CAA Spring Meetings
Simon Horton
Will computers forecast avalanches? Steps towards automated hazard assessments
2018 CAA Spring Meetings
Click here to view all SARP presentation videos.