Abstract
Abstract. This article presents the development of a sub-hourly database of hydrometeorological conditions collected in British Columbia's (BC's) Cariboo Mountains and surrounding area extending from 2006 to present. The Cariboo Alpine Mesonet (CAMnet) forms a network of 11 active hydrometeorological stations positioned at strategic locations across mid- to high elevations of the Cariboo Mountains. This mountain region spans 44 150 km2, forming the northern extension of the Columbia Mountains. Deep fjord lakes along with old-growth western redcedar and hemlock forests reside in the lower valleys, montane forests of Engelmann spruce, lodgepole pine and subalpine fir permeate the mid-elevations, while alpine tundra, glaciers and several large ice fields cover the higher elevations. The automatic weather stations typically measure air and soil temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall and snow depth at 15 min intervals. Additional measurements at some stations include shortwave and longwave radiation, near-surface air, skin, snow, or water temperature, and soil moisture, among others. Details on deployment sites, the instrumentation used and its precision, the collection and quality control process are provided. Instructions on how to access the database at Zenodo, an online public data repository, are also furnished (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1195043). Information on some of the challenges and opportunities encountered in maintaining continuous and homogeneous time series of hydrometeorological variables and remote field sites is provided. The paper also summarizes ongoing plans to expand CAMnet to better monitor atmospheric conditions in BC's mountainous terrain, efforts to push data online in (near-)real time, availability of ancillary data and lessons learned thus far in developing this mesoscale network of hydrometeorological stations in the data-sparse Cariboo Mountains.
Highlights
As in many regions worldwide, amplified climate change is altering the hydrometeorology of mountainous basins in northern British Columbia (BC)
As of 31 March 2018, Cariboo Alpine Mesonet (CAMnet) comprises 11 active meteorological stations and two radio repeaters positioned at strategic locations, predominantly at mid- to high elevations within the Quesnel River basin and the surrounding Cariboo Mountains of north-central BC (Figs. 3 and 4, Table 1)
During the summer of 2018, three additional meteorological stations were deployed along the shores of Quesnel Lake in support of an ongoing project investigating its resiliency to the Mount Polley mine tailings impoundment breach
Summary
As in many regions worldwide, amplified climate change is altering the hydrometeorology of mountainous basins in northern British Columbia (BC). Data from these weather stations have supported modelling studies of seasonal snowpack evolution (Younas et al, 2017), blowing snow fluxes (Déry et al, 2010), turbulent fluxes on a mountain glacier (Radicet al., 2017), glacial retreat (Beedle et al, 2009, 2015) and pro-glacial sediment transport dynamics (Leggat et al, 2015; Stott et al, 2016) These data have been used to validate remote sensing products of snow (Tong et al, 2009a, b, 2010), gridded meteorological datasets (Sharma and Déry, 2016) and output from numerical weather prediction models over complex terrain (Schirmer and Jamieson, 2015). The paper describes some of the challenges and opportunities incurred during the data collection process in the remote terrain of the Cariboo Mountains, the availability of ancillary data and prospects for future expansion of the network in the Cariboo Mountains and beyond
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