Meteorological stations planned on Slope

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to establish three small meteorological stations on Alaska’s North Slope as part of a climate change study.

Each station will have a 10-foot aluminum tripod tower, said a May 7 public notice from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Solar panels and batteries will supply power.

The stations will be installed along the Dalton Highway between milepost 357, near Pump Station 2 of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, and milepost 377.

“All locations are west, and within walking distance, of the Dalton Highway,” the notice said.

NOAA intends to install one station during the upcoming summer, and the other two in 2014.

Because the stations will be on state land, NOAA is making application to DNR’s Division of Mining, Land and Water. DNR said it intends to issue a five-year permit.

The public notice said the meteorological stations will be part of a study to “investigate possible positive feedbacks to the climate system in which warming of the permafrost causes carbon to be released as greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane),” amplifying climate change.

The three stations will support an aircraft measurement campaign.

“Basic climate variables including soil moisture, air temperature, and solar radiation will be collected in addition to carbon dioxide and methane. The data obtained from the ground-based systems will be compared to the aircraft measurements made over the same type of tundra. The information gathered will then be used to scale up to a much larger region of the North Slope,” the notice said.

—Wesley Loy