Antarctic Automatic Weather Station Program: 30 Years of Polar Observation

Antarctica boasts one of the world's harshest environments. Since the earliest expeditions, a major challenge has been to characterize the surface meteorology around the continent. In 1980, the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison) took over the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) Automatic We...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2012-10, Vol.93 (10), p.1519-1537
Main Authors: Lazzara, Matthew A., Weidner, George A., Keller, Linda M., Thom, Jonathan E., Cassano, John J.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Antarctica boasts one of the world's harshest environments. Since the earliest expeditions, a major challenge has been to characterize the surface meteorology around the continent. In 1980, the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison) took over the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) Automatic Weather Station (AWS) program. Since then, the UW-Madison AWS network has aided in the understanding of unique Antarctic weather and climate. This paper summarizes the development of the UW-Madison AWS network, issues related to instrumentation and data quality, and some of the ways these observations have and continue to benefit scientific investigations and operational meteorology.
ISSN:1520-0477
0003-0007
1520-0477
DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00015.1