Pallas-Sodankylä Research Station
Address
Pallas-Sodankylä Research StationsArctic Space Centre
Tähteläntie 62
99600 SODANKYLÄ
Pallas Atmosphere-Ecosystem Supersite
Pallaksentie
MUONIO
https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/pallas-atmosphere-ecosystem-supersite
Station manager
Antti Hyvärinen (Pallas) and Leena Leppänen (Sodankylä)E-mail: firstname.lastname@fmi.fi
Station Features
Opening year: 1949 Status: OpenFacilities
Station name and owner
The Pallas-Sodankylä Research Station consist of a clean air research station in Pallas and the Arctic Space Centre in Sodankylä. The distance between the two sites is 125 km. Both of these units are hosted and owned by the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Location
Pallas is located in western Lapland (67°58’ N, 24°07’ E) in Pallas fell. The station is part of a national park with limited access to the public. The Sodankylä facility (67°22’ N, 26°39’ E) is located in central Lapland within the boreal forest region. The station is not part of any national park, but the area (c. 2 km2) is dedicated to atmospheric and geological research, and therefore has limited public access. The area is surrounded by forest and wetland owned by the Finnish government.
Climate data
Grey colours are WMO Climate Normals including maximum and minimum values. Blue colours are individual years.
Climate data for the stations where extracted via Copernicus Climate Data Store, from the global gridded reanalysis product: ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels from 1940 to present. Description and source code: Roemer J.K. 2023. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10214922 Data Source: Hersbach et al. 2023. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS), https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.f17050d7
Biodiversity and natural environment
The area around Pallas Station is boreal forest. Willow grouse, rabbit, and reindeer are the most typical animals. Sodankylä Station is located at a river bank in the middle of a boreal forest. Black grouse, rabbit, and reindeer are the most typical animals.
History and facilities
The Finnish Meteorological Institute has a long history of atmospheric monitoring at Pallas; the first weather station was established near Lake Pallasjärvi in 1935. The measurements of atmospheric composition were started in 1991, and the Sammaltunturi station was established as a node of the Pallas–Sodankylä Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) station in 1994. The Sodankylä Station was established in 1949, but continuous homogenized synoptic weather records have been made since 1908. The facility consists currently of multiple buildings (1500 m2 in total).
General research and databases
The Pallas station consists of research infrastructure for monitoring and studying the atmosphere, ecosystems and their interactions. The research area hosts four sub-sites with different research programs within a 5 km radius, covering different micro-environments: top of an arctic fell, an elevated forest clearing, a forest site and a subarctic fen. The Sodankylä facility hosts programs exploring upper-air chemistry and physics, atmospheric column measurements, snow/soil physics, biosphere-atmosphere interaction, and satellite calibration-validation studies.
Link to data: https://dataportal.eu-interact.org/stations
Station Monitoring
Human dimension
Nearest village to Pallas Station is Muonio (23 km). Muonio has c. 2300 inhabitants. Nearest village to Sodankylä Station is Sodankylä (7 km). Sodankylä has c. 6000 inhabitants (8,500 in the municipality). Main employers are the military, mining industry, smaller industry, agriculture, reindeer farmers, and research institutes.
Access
Kittilä airport is 60 km from Pallas Station. The distance to the Rovaniemi railway station is 220 km. Seven km from Sodankylä Station is bus station in Sodankylä. The distance to the nearest airport and railway station in Rovaniemi is 130 km. A helicopter station is located 4 km from the station. Travel time from the airport is typically less than 2 hours by car/bus.
