NSA Atqasuk Facility—Inactive

Location: 70° 28' 19.11" N, 157° 24' 28.99" W
Altitude: 20 meters

The Atqasuk facility, which was part of the larger ARM Climate Research Facility (ARM) North Slope of Alaska site, was installed the summer of 1999 off of a road near the Atqasuk Airport and operated through 2010. Located approximately 70 miles south of Barrow, Atqasuk is adjacent to the Meade River. Its climate is much more continental than that of Barrow.

Atqasuk (population 225) has an economy that is largely based on subsistence fishing and caribou hunting. The Atqasuk community infrastructure includes a store, a gas station, a very impressive school, a health clinic, a firehouse, a community center, a power plant, a water plant, and, of course, the airport. Travel to Atqasuk is typically by scheduled bush airline. There are at least four scheduled flights to and from Atqasuk from Barrow each day. Local people also travel to Barrow by snow machine, which takes 3 to 4 hours depending upon the speed.

Available Instrumentation

List of Atqasuk instruments.

There are no land lines that run to Atqasuk (or to Barrow for that matter). This means that all communications, both voice and data, were through commercially supplied satellite links. Data were transferred through a 56K line, which was sufficient for the instrumentation bandwidth load.

Co-located Science Projects (non-ARM)

Research funded by the National Science Foundation Arctic System Science Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions is immediately adjacent to the Atqasuk facility as well as to the Barrow facility.