Eureka, Nunavut

Divisions

The base consists of three areas:

PEARL is operated by a consortium of Canadian university researchers and government agencies known as the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Change. PEARL announced it would cease full-time year-round operation as of April 30, 2012, due to lack of funding, but this decision was reversed in May 2013 with the announcement of new funds.

History

Eureka was founded on April 11, 1947, as part of a requirement to set up a network of Arctic weather stations. On this date, 100 tonnes (98 long tons; 110 short tons) of supplies were airlifted to a promising spot on Ellesmere Island, and five prefabricated Jamesway huts were constructed. Regular weather observations began on January 1, 1948. The station has expanded over the years. At its peak, in the 1970s, at least fifteen staff were on site; in 2005, it reported a permanent population of zero with at least 8 staff on a continuous rotational basis.

Several generations of buildings have been developed. The latest operations centre, with work areas and staff quarters in one large structure, was completed in 2005.

Climate

Eureka experiences a Polar climate (ET). The settlement sees the midnight sun between April 10 and August 29, with no sunlight at all between mid-October and late February. Eureka has the lowest average annual temperature and least precipitation of any weather station in Canada with an annual mean temperature of −18.8 °C (−1.8 °F). However, summers are slightly warmer than at other places in the Canadian Arctic due to the fact that Eureka is somewhat landlocked, being near the center of Ellesmere Island. Even so, since record keeping began, the temperature has never exceeded 20.9 °C (69.6 °F), first reached on July 14, 2009. Although a polar desert, evaporation is also very low, which allows the limited moisture to be made available for plants and wildlife.

Location and accessibility

The complex is powered by diesel generators. The station is supplied on a tri-weekly basis with fresh food and mail by air, and annually in the late summer, a supply ship from Montreal brings heavy supplies. On July 3, 2009, a Danish Challenger 604 MMA jet landed at Eureka's aerodrome. The jet is a military observation aircraft based on the Challenger executive jet. This jet visited Eureka on a familiarization trip, in order to prepare for the possibility of Danish aircraft assisting in Search and Rescue missions over Canadian territory. The Canadian American Strategic Review noted critically that the first jet to fly a mission to Eureka was not Canadian.

At Eureka's latitude, a geosynchronous communications satellite, if due south, would require an antenna to be pointed nearly horizontally; satellites farther east or west along that orbit would be below the horizon. Telephone access and television broadcasts arrived in 1982 when Operation Hurricane resulted in the establishment of a satellite receiving station at nearby Skull Point, which has an open view to the south. The low power Channel 9 TV transmitter at Skull Point was the world's most northern TV station at the time. In the 1980s, TV audio was often connected to the telephone to feed CBC-TV news to CHAR-FM in isolated Alert. More recently, CANDAC has installed what is likely the world's most northerly geosynchronous satellite ground-station to provide Internet-based communications to PEARL.

Other settlements on Ellesmere Island include Alert and Grise Fiord.

Flora and fauna

Eureka has been described as "The Garden Spot of the Arctic" due to the flora and fauna abundant around the Eureka area, more so than anywhere else in the High Arctic. Fauna include musk oxen, Arctic wolves, Arctic foxes, Arctic hares, and lemmings. In addition, summer nesting geese, ducks, owls, loons, ravens, gulls and many other smaller birds nest, raise their young, and return south in August.