Comparison of AIRS and IASI Surface Observations of DomeC in Antarctica with Surface Temperatures Reported by AWS8989

The decrease of the ice in the Antarctic indicates that the land and the ocean along the coastline are warming up. Representative numbers for warming at the surface further inland are much more complicated due to the vast size of the continent. The Automated Weather Station AWS8989 has been reporting temperatures from Concordia Station on DomeC in Antarctica every 10 minutes since 1996. AWS8989 is located about 1 mile from the power plant at Concordia Station. We compare the surface temperatures at DomeC deduced from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) data to the surface temperature reported by Automated Weather Station AWS8989 for the year between May 1, 2007 and April 30, 2008. AIRS and IASI measure the mean skin brightness temperature in a 50-km-radius circle from DomeC, while the AWS reports the temperature of the air at 3 meters above the surface. The AIRS and IASI measurements agree within 50 mK over the entire temperature range from 190 K in the winter to 245 K in the summer, but consistently report a colder temperature than the AWS8989. The warm bias of AWS8989 is season dependent, changing from 1.5 K warm in the winter to 5.5 K warm in the summer. Comparison of AIRS data in 2005 with a temporary Italian AWS (Aumann et al. 2006) and located several miles upwind from the power station, showed no significant temperature bias throughout the year 2005. The warm readings of AWS8989 are likely due the combination of a season-independent 1.5 K warm calibration bias in the AWS8989 sensor plus thermal contamination of the AWS8989 site. This heat island effect ranges from near zero during the low-activity winter months to about 4 K during the summer months with the highest activity at Concordia Station. The fact that activities at DomeC are increasing makes surface temperature trends from AWS8989 suspect. AIRS and IASI are hyperspectral infrared sounders designed in support of weather forecasting and climate research. AIRS was launched in May 2002 on the EOS Aqua spacecraft into a 704 km altitude polar sun- synchronous orbit with a 1:30 PM ascending node and is expected to provide data through 2015. IASI was launched in October 2006 into an 825 km altitude polar sun-synchronous orbit with a 9:30 AM ascending node with an expected 5-year lifetime.