The Rise of the Antarctic Weather Station Network: Technology, Research, Forecasting, and Modeling
Abstract
Observing the surface meteorology of the Antarctic is a significant challenge due to its remoteness and extreme weather occurrences. The development and maintenance of an automatic weather station (AWS) network is essential to cover the vast area of the continent that has very sparse and limited staffed station observations. The AWS network provides the bulk of the surface weather and climate observations in Antarctica. The observations from the network are used for operational forecasting, research projects, and numerical modeling. Today's network has a multi-decadal history of technological developments that gave rise to a successful AWS program. This presentation reviews the history of AWS technological development along with a current network status report and discussion of the future. Maintaining such an extensive network of AWS comes with responsibilities, along with a host of logistical problems and other challenges. Some of these challenges are outlined to illustrate the operating and maintenance effort of the largest Antarctic surface meteorological observation network. Applications and uses of the network are examined including both operational and research undertakings. Observations direct from the network are continuously used in weather forecasting and have been throughout the entire existence of the network. In parallel, the observations have been used to explore a variety of meteorological processes (e.g. katabatic winds, etc.). With the network nearing 37 years of observations, a review of recent climate studies is briefly summarized. The AWS network observations are important for numerical modeling efforts; they have the potential to help drive the model and they do aid in verification and validation efforts. One current endeavor combines expertise in long-term observations with numerical modeling to help improve the network into the future. The position of some AWS sites in the future will be targeted at maximizing model performance. With these observations, the potential exists to improve polar weather and climate predictions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.A53I..07L
- Keywords:
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- 3337 Global climate models;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3339 Ocean/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3349 Polar meteorology;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 0738 Ice;
- CRYOSPHERE