| Summary: | The grant, a collaboration between 0632131 (Sturm, CRREL, LEAD), 0632160 (Kane, UAF) and 0632133/1023562 (Liston, CSU; Hiemstra, CRREL). The chief goal is working to develop better instruments and ways of measuring snow in the Arctic, and analyzing the resultant data. At sites at Barrow, Imnavait Creek, Fox, and Nome Creek Alaska, and in Inuvik, Canada the team has installed meteorological and snow measuring instrumentation including solid-state snow pillows, heated plate precipitation sensors, snow fences (to capture the wind-blown flux), and normal and eddy correlation meteorological towers for monitoring snowfall and snow on the ground. In addition to these autonomous instruments, the team periodically runs intense field campaigns during which a variety snow surveys are conducted, including surveys of snow cover depth, snow water equivalent, density, stratigraphy and other properties. These ground-based surveys are being augmented using aerial photography and ground- and airborne LiDAR. Part of the project is also focused on developing new types of sensors and techniques, including the development of small, low-cost sonic sounders for depth, rotating sonic sounders for better averages of depth, and airborne and ground-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) for extensive snow depth and surface topography. The combined suite of instrument development and measurement protocols is designed to allow closure of the winter water balance and lead to better ways of monitoring Arctic snow for climate. Within the U.S., this improvement in monitoring would directly benefit the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), one of the prime agencies charged with monitoring precipitation and snow cover, as well as the U.S. Weather Service. In addition, the project is contributing to the education of several graduate students, and has had positive impact on the general public through the publication of an English-Inupiat glossary as well as two other books and several papers on the Arctic. The project data on ACADIS have been separated into time series data as reported from the autonomous instruments like weather stations and webcams, and intermittent data from field campaigns collected by humans. These latter appear by campaign date. Because the data come from five (5) different Arctic locations, and at each location have been obtained from a spatial extent that ranges from a few to hundreds of kilometers, a data user is advised to contact the Project Leader (Dr. M. Sturm, matthew.sturm@usace.army.mil) for specific metadata information. A file called aSnowNetReadme.pdf provides an overview of the concept of the project as well as details about the observatory sites.
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