The Tiksi, Russia hydrometeorological international facility for atmospheric, terrestrial and ocean observations: first measurements and future plans

During the International Polar Year within the framework of Activity 196 “International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere” (IASOA) a key task was “Creation of the Atmospheric Observatory of Climatic Monitoring in Tiksi, Russia”. This task has been realized by the combined efforts of Roshydromet, NOAA, NSF, the Polar Foundation, the Sakha Republic and the Finish Meteorological Institute. A number of presentations in the last several years have described the programmatic concept of the Tiksi Hydrometeorological Research Observatory and presented progress on the development of the facilities. The current observatory features modernized communications, power, laboratory and office facilities which are suitable for supporting the collection of quantitative data on atmospheric structure and processes as well as associated ocean and land parameters in order to further studies of weather and climate. The Tiksi science program has had a preliminary focus on supporting International networks, such as Global Atmosphere Watch (atmospheric gases and aerosols), Baseline Surface Radiation Network (atmospheric radiation), Climate Reference Network (climate grade weather observations), the International Permafrost Association (IPA), and AeroNET (aerosol optical depth). The Tiksi Observatory was officially opened on August 25, 2010 in the presence of official representatives of Roshydromet, NOAA, NSF and FMI. The official opening not only marked a programmatic milestone, but also the beginning of a number of key measurements of surface and atmospheric radiation, the permafrost active layer, black carbon, surface ozone, atmospheric optical depth, aerosol concentrations, water vapor, methane and CO2 fluxes, greenhouse gases and persistent organic pollutants. In addition, the infrastructure was installed for climate reference grade meteorological surface measurements and tower based surface energy budget fluxes. In this presentation, the first measurements are presented and discussed in the context of the kinds of ongoing process studies that will be possible with these combined long-term, climate-grade measurements.