| The observation area
the coastal region near Barrow, Alaska. The Barrow area is an intriguing
mix of sea ice, ocean, lake ice, lagoons, and tundra. It is an excellent
locale to examine both the marine and terrestrial environments and the
linkages between them. Other attributes of the Barrow area are (1) the scientific support
infrastructure offered through the Barrow Arctic Science
Consortium, BASC,
(2) the concurrent commitment to longer-term atmospheric research through
the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, (3) the
availability of basic meteorological data from ARM and the nearby NOAA
weather station, (4) quick and easy access from larger population centers,
and (5) the establishment of a large environmental reserve through the
North Slope Borough. In addition, there are a variety of ongoing and
proposed research activities in the area involving the tundra and ocean
that could benefit from the observations proposed here. Finally, the
location closes a long-standing gap between ice mass balance measurements
being carried out in the Canadian Archipelago and in the Siberian Arctic. For these reasons we feel
that Barrow provides an almost ideal location for a long-term program to
monitor not only the effects of climate change on seasonal sea ice, but
also the impacts of such changes on interactions between the ice, ocean,
atmosphere and tundra system.
We selected five sites to monitor:
- Beaufort Sea, off of Point Barrow:
seasonal land fast sea ice, minimal ice motion.
- Chukchi Sea off of NARL: seasonal land
fast sea ice, significant ice motion.
- Elson Lagoon: seasonal saline ice,
quiescent growth conditions.
- Imikpuk Lake: seasonal fresh ice,
quiescent growth conditions (deep lake not freezing to bottom).
- Tundra: tundra near the ARM and NOAA
CMDL sites.
|
