The U.S. Climate Reference Network in Alaska: experimental observations and deployment

The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) initial deployment of 114 stations in the continental U.S. was completed in September 2008. These stations are designed to yield high quality and continuous climate observations for highly stable sites for the next 50 years, tracing the national trends in temperature and precipitation over this time. As part of this program, and in conjunction with the U.S. Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Program, a set of experimental USCRN stations were installed in Alaska, two of which have been operating for more than 6 years (Point Barrow and Fairbanks), and two more recently installed (St. Paul Island and Sitka). The experience gained at these experimental sites will be utilized in designing and deploying USCRN in Alaska over the next five years, totaling an additional 29 stations evenly distributed across Alaska when completed. This distribution of stations is by design sufficient to detect significant temperature and precipitation trends for Alaska. Moreover, the observations will be of the highest quality in these challenging environments due to the innovative use of systems that produce three independent measurements of temperature and precipitation simultaneously at each site, allowing for rigorous cross-checking and quality control tied to NIST reference standards. These plans will be reviewed, and some of the initial findings from the experimental stations will be discussed, including recent trends and the behavior of the stations under extreme Alaskan weather conditions.