Snow water equivalent data from the Upper Kuparuk River watershed, Arctic Alaska, 1997-2017

Many remote areas of Alaska lack meteorological data; this is especially true for solid precipitation. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Water and Environmental Research Center have been collecting end-of-winter snow depth, snow density, and snow water equivalent (SWE) during annual snow surveys. Snow surveys in the Upper Kuparuk watershed (130 square kilometers) provide ground-based spatially distributed snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements from 1997 to 2017. These observations do not document the total snowfall during the winter, but provide quantitative estimate of cold season precipitation on the ground at winter’s end after sublimation and redistribution by wind.