Streamflow and sediment transfer from a mountainous high Arctic watershed, northern Ellesmere Island, Canada

The Lake C2 watershed at Taconite Inlet (82;A continuous record of discharge, determined by stage-discharge relations, and short-interval sampling of suspended sediment concentration (SSC), permitted the production of hourly time series. In addition, two weather stations logged hourly temperature, humidity, wind and complete radiation data at 7 m and 520 m a.s.l. The upper station was located close to the median watershed elevation.;Mean daily air temperatures were rarely higher than 5;Among meteorological variables measured at weather station Alert (ca. 225 km east), rawinsonde sounding temperatures at 600 m were most closely associated with daily SSQ into Lake C2. Accordingly, an exponential equation, based on pooled 1990 and 1992 data, was used to predict daily watershed SSQ for the period of record (1951-89). The series of annual predicted sediment loads were found to be in excellent agreement with a normalized varve thickness series. This study indicates that laminated sediments in Lake C2 contain a high-resolution record of regional summer temperature.