Air and soil temperatures and soil moisture in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) plots at Utqiaġvik and Atqasuk, Alaska

Arctic ecosystems are changing in response to arctic warming, which is proceeding more than twice as fast as the global average. The International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) was established in the early 1990s to understand the effects of warming and environmental variability on tundra vegetation properties and ecosystem function. The ITEX program has been extremely valuable for detection of changes in tundra plant and ecosystem responses to experimental warming and to background climate change across sites that span the major ecosystems of the Arctic. These files contain data representing the detailed microclimate of ITEX plots in Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) and Atqasuk in a text comma delimited format. The data presented are hourly plant canopy temperature, soil temperature, soil moisture, and soil salinity of four plots (two experiment open-top chamber plots and two control plots) at four sites (Atqasuk Wet Meadow, Atqasuk Dry Heath, Utqiaġvik Wet Meadow, and Utqiaġvik Dry Heath).