A new paradigm for Summit: enhanced traverse capabilities and satellite camps.`

Summit Station began its life at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet (72°N, 38°W, 3200 m.a.s.l.), as the drilling camp for the GISP2 ice core in 1989. Since then, the station has hosted both summer campaign science, and since 1997, year-round observations of atmospheric and cryospheric processes, both chemical and physical. After "experimental" winter seasons in 1997-98 and 2000-2002, the station has been continuously occupied since 2003. While most of the science activities at the station are supported by the US NSF Polar Division, the station also hosts many interagency and international investigations in physical glaciology, atmospheric chemistry, and other disciplines. Projects requiring access to the only high elevation observatory North of the Arctic circle providing clean air or snow for chemistry experiments will find Summit a unique and suitable location. In addition to investigator-driven projects, Summit hosts a cooperative NOAA-NSF Long Term Observatory (LTO) program committed to maintaining year-round measurements of key baseline variables of climate change at the site., The facility is operated by CH2M HILL Polar Services (CPS) with guidance from the Science Coordination Office (SCO), and the cooperation of the Government of Greenland. Facility support is primarily from NSF ARSL. Summit has historically served as a logistical hub for wider-ranging field studies in central Greenland and also stationary projects seeking a convenient location in the dry-snow zone. These functions conflict with the goal of reducing emissions at Summit in support of clean science. In recent years and into the future, projects without a need for the unique clean-snow / air characteristics will be increasingly directed to alternate locations in the dry-snow zone. These locations include a new logistical-hub to the north that will serve as the base of operations for projects not requiring a direct connection to the historical climate records of Summit , or locations served by the logistics of the Greenland Inland Traverse.