North Slope of Alaska

The North Slope of Alaska (NSA) atmospheric observatory at Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) provides data about cloud and radiative processes at high latitudes.

The NSA is a focal point for atmospheric and ecological research activity in the Arctic. Scientists use data from the NSA to improve the representation of high-latitude cloud and radiation processes in earth system models.

For almost 25 years, ARM has collected continuous data from Alaska’s North Slope.

Utqiaġvik

In an area known as the “top of the world,” the Utqiaġvik site hosts research near the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

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Oliktok Point (Now Inactive)

Previously, ARM also operated the third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3) at Oliktok Point, east of Utqiaġvik. This remote deployment provided important data about arctic climate processes at the intersection of land and sea ice, and it was aided by DOE-controlled airspaces for piloted aircraft and uncrewed aerial systems. In June 2021, ARM ceased AMF3 operations at Oliktok after almost eight years.

Please note: Data from Oliktok—as with all previous ARM Mobile Facility deployments—remain freely available in the ARM Data Center.

The NSA observatory offers ideal locations to study the rapidly changing atmosphere and climate of the Arctic. The observatory collects comprehensive data about cloud and radiative processes using ARM instrument systems. Compelling reasons to study the atmosphere and climate at high latitudes include:

• The Arctic is warming more quickly than anywhere else on the planet. Recent decreases in arctic sea ice coverage affect how much heat from sunlight is reflected versus absorbed by the ocean.
• In the Arctic, ice (including snow) is the predominant form of condensed water most of the year. Ice and snow scatter, transmit, and absorb sunlight and radiant heat much differently than water.
• There is very little water vapor in the atmosphere, which changes how radiant energy propagates through the atmosphere and affects the performance of some instruments.
• The major “pumps” for the global ocean currents are at high latitudes, and there is good reason to believe that those pumps will be affected by climate-related changes in the atmosphere.
• High-latitude atmospheric processes over both land and sea must be characterized for incorporation into global and regional climate models, and are typically underrepresented due to the sparsity of collection sites.
• Polar amplification will likely produce a larger change in temperature at the poles as compared to the average change of the planet as a whole. This will affect global weather patterns, likely resulting in more severe weather events at lower latitudes as well.

The Utqiaġvik and Oliktok Point facilities have each supported more than 32 different instruments, many of which were built specifically for the high latitudes.  In addition to fixed instrumentation, the NSA has expanded its use of piloted aircraft and uncrewed aerial systems through the ARM Aerial Facility (AAF), as well as its use of tethered balloon systems (TBS).

ARM transmits all data gathered at the NSA to the ARM Data Center, where they are made freely available via Data Discovery.

AMF3 at Oliktok Point was the only ARM facility that included controlled airspace, with two designated areas. These controlled airspaces gave the NSA observatory more freedom in using aerial systems to study the atmosphere.

ARM’s Restricted Airspace consisted of a 4-nautical-mile (nm) radius, centered at Oliktok Point and extending 7,000 feet above ground level. ARM also operated a Warning Area north of Oliktok Point that was roughly 40 nm wide and extended approximately 700 nm into international airspace over the Arctic Ocean toward the North Pole.