It is August 20 in Siberia and we are in Yakutsk, Russia en route to Tiksi, Russia. "We" are a group of scientists, program managers and infrastucture development specialists from both the United States and Russia. Tiksi is a small outpost town at the mouth of the Lena River delta, and the location of a Russian Weather Service (Roshydromet) station that will now also become the location of a new meteorological and hydrological observatory. This trip is an exciting step in a program that has been developing over the last 3 years to establish Tiksi as a flagship observatory in the network being coordinated by the International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere (IASOA). It is summer in Yakutsk and yesterday our local Roshydromet hosts took us on a boat trip on the ...