the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 26 Feb 2026
Hydrometeorological and hydrological data from Baker Creek Research Watershed, Northwest Territories, Canada Release V.3
Abstract. The V.3 data release from the Baker Creek Research Watershed documents hydrometeorological and hydrological conditions from 2003 to 2025. Baker Creek drains 155 km2 of subarctic Canadian Shield terrain in Treaty 11 in Canada's Northwest Territories. Half-hourly hydrometeorological data are available from the three most common landscape types, including exposed Precambrian bedrock ridges, open black spruce forest and lakes. Hydrometeorological data include radiation fluxes, precipitation, temperature, humidity, winds, barometric pressure and turbulent energy fluxes. Data from terrestrial sites include ground temperature and soil moisture. Spring maximum snowpack water equivalent, depth and density data are included. Daily streamflow data are available for six nested watersheds ranging in size from 9 to 155 km2. These data are unique in this remote region and provide communities with an opportunity to advance understanding of the hydrological response of a subarctic watershed subject to a warming trend and precipitation cycles. The data described here are available from the Federated Research Data Repository at: https://doi.org/10.20383/103.01579 (Spence and Hedstrom, 2026).
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Status: final response (author comments only)
- RC1: 'Comment on essd-2026-87', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Apr 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2026-87', Ryan Connon, 27 Apr 2026
Hydrometeorological and hydrological data from Baker Creek Research Watershed, Northwest Territories, Canada Release V.3
Spence, Christopher, & Hedstrom, Newell
The authors have done a formidable job of maintaining a long-term hydrometeorological dataset in the Baker Creek catchment. As noted in the manuscript, datasets of this quality and continuity are extremely rare in cold region environments and are critical to understanding how climate change has and will continue to impact the North. Data papers such as this one allow for scientists to understand instrumentation set up and gain an understanding of the environment that is being studied. I commend the authors for their dedication to this site and their efforts to update this dataset.
Minor comments:
Lines 33 and 34: Can the authors provide a reference for this statement? Line 77 shows that Baker Creek produces mean annual runoff of 45 mm, which is extremely low. The Mackenzie River basin produces mean annual runoff of 170 mm (Mackenzie at Arctic Red River; 10LC014). I’m not convinced that the subarctic Canadian Shield produces a disproportionate amount of streamflow relative to its size. I would point to the mountainous headwater regions for that.
Line 74: Awkward wording, consider revising the precipitation sentence.
Figure 1: Can the authors include the % cover of each land cover in the legend? (i.e. Exposed bedrock (40%))
Figure 4: I would recommend splitting this figure into two panels: a) Mean annual air temperature at Yellowknife A; and b) Mean summer (01 Jul to 15 Sep) at Yellowknife A and Bedrock.
Figure 5: Include an overlay title to make it easier to read which sensor or measurement method is being used (in addition to caption). Fix the y-axes so they are the same scale for (a) and (b) (have both scales from 0 to 60 mm); and also for (d) and (e) (have both scales from 0 to 100 mm).
Figure 5: I would also be very interested in seeing a figure compare total annual SWE between the Geonor, SSG, and manual snow surveys. This would be a great venue to show an instrument intercomparison.
Table 6: Can this table be updated to include data for 2023, 2024, and 2025? Based on Figure 8, it appears that these data are available.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-87-RC2 -
AC1: 'Response to referee comments on essd-2026-87', Christopher Spence, 05 May 2026
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-87/essd-2026-87-AC1-supplement.pdf
Data sets
Hydrometeorological and hydrological data from Baker Creek Research Watershed, Northwest Territories, Canada Release V.3 C. Spence and N. Hedstrom https://doi.org/10.20383/103.01579
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Spence and Hedstrom provide a third update to data from Baker Creek in Canada's Northwest Territories. This is a remarkable sentinel site and I commend the authors for the hard work to keep this remote and hard to access site going. As the authors point out, data from this site can be used for many purposes by many people There aer few other sites with such long term data sets in a cold and rapidly changing environment. The authors highlight recent studies that have used their data, which shows considerable update. I have reviewed the manuscript data and it clear with metadata and appropriate labelling. There are a few comments that the authors may consider:
Figure 3 shows average daily net radiation. Could this figure how more of the 'variability' in the energy fluxes? So perhaps a solid line for the average and shading for some range (SD, IQR, etc) just to get an idea of the variability. The same comment for Table 3
Figure 4 is very small and difficult to read. Axes, labels, etc., should all be made much larger.Â
For Figure 5, would it be worthwhile to indicate when there were sensor issues with a shaded region. This is different than 'no data', but for example it seems 2008 had no rainfall, but obviously this was because of some instrumentation problem (which is normal). This isn't critical I suppose, but tehe same goes for the total precipitation figure. Something to consider.Â
Figure 6. I think this is volumetric liquid water technically, not total soil moisture.Â
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