Life at the top of the world
At a latitude of 82°30'05" North, on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island, Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert is the most northerly, continuously inhabited location on the planet. It sits just 817 kilometers from the geographic North Pole. This station began in 1950 as part of the Joint Arctic Weather Station (JAWS) system, a Cold War collaboration between the U.S. and Canada. Today, it is operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force and hosts around 55 rotating personnel, including military staff and scientists from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The environment is extreme and classified as a polar desert. Annual precipitation is a mere 150 millimeters. The yearly mean temperature is -17.7°C, with the coldest month, February, averaging -33.2°C. A record low of -50°C was recorded in February 2002. Due to its position far above the Arctic Circle, Alert experiences complete polar night from approximately October 14 to February 28, when the sun never rises. Conversely, the midnight sun, a period of 24-hour daylight, lasts from about April 7 to September 4.
A baseline for the planet's atmosphere
Six kilometers from the main station is the Dr. Neil Trivett Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Observatory, which opened in 1986. At an elevation of 210 meters above sea level, its location is ideal for sampling well-mixed air masses representative of the Northern Hemisphere, far from industrial pollution sources. The observatory is the northernmost of 31 global stations in the World Meteorological Organization's GAW network.
Scientists at the Alert observatory conduct continuous monitoring of aerosols, mercury, greenhouse gases, and both ground-level and stratospheric ozone. The facility is one of only three greenhouse gas "intercomparison supersites" in the world, providing baseline data for global climate models. The first flask samples for carbon dioxide measurement were taken here on July 8, 1975, creating one of the longest continuous records of Arctic atmospheric data. The land is covered by snow for nearly ten months of the year, which helps in the study of polar-specific processes like Arctic haze. The landscape has steep ravines and high cliffs terrain shaped by recent glacial activity.