Exploration at the project site in Southwest Alaska, at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, has already identified rich ore potential for copper, gold and molybdenum.

Hoefler Consulting Group, an Anchorage-based environmental consulting firm, collected the data from the exploration site, including wind speeds, wind direction, temperature, solar radiation, precipitation, evaporation, relative humidity and barometric pressure.

The collection of meteorological data is required by federal and state regulatory agencies as part of the environmental baseline document and project permitting process, in part to assess the project's potential effects on air quality.

John Shively, recently appointed chief executive officer of the Pebble Partnership, said the organization would publicly release its environmental data in a series of installments over the next 20 months, prior to initiation of project permitting.

Shively said the data would be released with little or no analysis over a period of months rather than all at once because of the volume of information and strict requirements for quality assurance and control.

Biologists critical of the project have expressed concern about the value of baseline data collected after the exploration project was already underway.

The partnership, based in Anchorage, is a joint investment of Northern Dynasty Minerals of Vancouver, British Columbia, and London-based Anglo American, an international mining and natural resources firm.

Under an agreement announced Oct. 4, 2007, Anglo American agreed to invest more than $1.4 billion in Pebble development to earn its 50 percent share of the project. Northern Dynasty, which will own 50 percent, had invested $177.5 million through Aug. 1, 2007, according to partnership spokesman Sean McGee.