Opening of the Barrow Global Climate Research Facility

The Barrow Global Climate Change Research Facility (BGCCRF) will open during spring 2007 to approximately coincide with the beginning of the International Polar Year. The new center at Barrow will be available to support IPY projects on the North Slope of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. Barrow has been a popular locale for high-latitude research since the first IPY more than a century ago. Now as then, Barrow is one of the easiest places in the Arctic to reach, and offers superior logistical support. From about 1950 to the early 1980s, the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL) at Barrow served as a magnet for high-latitude research. After NARL closed, research on the North Slope of Alaska slowed. Over the past two decades, however, the pace of research in the vicinity of Barrow has been increasing as a result of the accelerating warming of the Arctic associated with global climate change. It was this continuing intense interest in the characteristics and consequences of climate change in the Arctic that led to support by Congress for construction of the new center through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The BGCCRF sits on the edge of the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO), an 11 square mile area set aside by the land owner, Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation (UIC), for environmental research. This land has been used for high-latitude ecological and related research at least since the early days of NARL. The BGCCRF will also support access to areas of the Chukchi Sea, the Beaufort Sea and Elson Lagoon in the vicinity of Pt. Barrow, the farthest north point of US territory. Phase One of the BGCCRF will, when it opens this spring, provide expanded support for high-latitude science, which will increase as additional phases, which will include lodging, as well as more workshops and labs, are completed over the next few years. The BGCCRF is supported by a wide array of in situ and remote sensing instrumentation operated by various federal entities (NOAA, DOE, NASA, USGS). This paper will describe each phase of the new center as currently planned. It will also describe the organizational arrangements for its operation. The new center will be available for use by researchers supported by federal, state, and local agencies, as well as by industry and foreign organizations. Information on the BGCCRF is available through the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC) web site (http://www.arcticscience.org) and through the authors, who serve BASC respectively as President of the Board of Directors, Executive Director, and chairs of BASC advisory committees.