Automatic weather station (AWS)

• Main Authors: N. John Anderson, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Christopher E. Gibson, Bent Hasholt, Melanie J. Leng
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Hydrological station; Arctic; Climate change; Søndre strømfjord
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.555.8039; http://www.geus.dk/publications/review-greenland-01/gsb191p144-149.pdf

Arctic hydrology plays a central role in the earth’s heat balance and ocean circulation (Vörösmarty et al. 2001). Future changes associated with human influence on the climate system are also predicted to cause major changes in the energy and hydrologic mass balance of Arctic catchments. Climate change will likely affect per-mafrost and snowmelt, which dominate Arctic hydro-logy and control the chemistry of surface runoff (and hence streams and lakes) as water percolates through the active layer. However, the controls and dynamic impact of snowmelt are poorly understood, because this critical timeframe is often missed by sampling pro-grammes. In the Søndre Strømfjord area only the broad-est aspects of hydrologic variability have so far been documented (Hasholt & Søgaard 1976). Lakes respond to climatic forcing at a variety of timescales. For example, at relatively high frequencies (days), thermal stratification can be weakened or bro-ken down by increased wind speeds associated with the passage of frontal systems. Seasonally, lake tem-peratures reflect annual changes in radiative heating and ambient air temperatures (Hostetler 1995). Year to year variability in climate can reduce the ice-free period