Environment Canada plans to install a station near Great Slave Lake that will measure greenhouse gas levels in the Northwest Territories.

The global atmospheric watch station, to be set up within a year, will join a network of eight existing stations across Canada.

The station will be the second in Canada's North, with the first located near Canadian Forces Station Alert in Nunavut, said Francis Zwiers, Environment Canada's director of climate research.

"It's located there because it's very far from industrial emission sources, and so we're able to monitor ... what is the background state of the atmosphere," Zwiers told CBC News on Wednesday.

"There are very a small number of stations like this spread across the face of the globe, in remote places, and those are the stations that tell us what the current greenhouse gas composition in the atmosphere is and how it's changing."

Zwiers said the Arctic is very important for climate change observers, which is why Environment Canada wants to have two global atmospheric watch stations in the North.