ALBERT

Description: Despite the importance of surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. In situ observational data of SEB components - useful for research and model validation - are collected at relatively few sites across the terrestrial Arctic, and not all available datasets are readily interoperable. Furthermore, the terrestrial Arctic consists of a diversity of vegetation types, which are generally not well represented in land surface schemes of current Earth system models. This dataset describes the environmental conditions for 64 tundra and glacier sites (〉=60°N latitude) across the Arctic, for which in situ measurements of surface energy budget components were harmonized (see Oehri et al. 2022). These environmental conditions are (proxies of) potential drivers of SEB-components and could therefore be called SEB-drivers. The associated environmental conditions, include the vegetation types graminoid tundra, prostrate dwarf-shrub tundra, erect-shrub tundra, wetland complexes, barren complexes (≤ 40% horizontal plant cover), boreal peat bogs and glacier. These land surface types (apart from boreal peat bogs) correspond to the main classification units of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM, Raynolds et al. 2019). For each site, additional climatic and biophysical variables are available, including cloud cover, snow cover duration, permafrost characteristics, climatic conditions and topographic conditions.