AMRC & AWS

PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA
PAWS AUTOMATED WEATHER DATA SYSTEM

MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGY REPORTS (WXYYYYMM.PRN)

Updated 10 October 2023 by B. Rosen-Filardo (Palmer RA)


Column	Label				Description
------	-----				-----------
  1	Day				Day of month

  2	Temperature High		Air temperature, high, °C
					Rotronic HC2S3 in aspirated enclosure

  3	Temperature Low			Air temperature, low, °C
					Rotronic HC2S3 in aspirated enclosure

  4	Temperature Average		Air temperature, average, °C
					Rotronic HC2S3 in aspirated enclosure

  5	Pressure High			Atmospheric pressure, high, mbar
					Honeywell HPA200

  6	Pressure Low			Atmospheric pressure, low, mbar
					Honeywell HPA200

  7	Pressure Average		Atmospheric pressure, average, mbar
					Honeywell HPA200

  8	Wind 5-Sec Peak			Maximum wind gust (5-second average), knots
					RM Young 05108-45

  9	Wind 5-Sec Peak Direction	Direction of maximum wind gust, degrees (true)
					RM Young 05108-45

  10	Wind Average			Average wind speed, knots
					RM Young 05108-45
  
  11	Wind Prevailing Direction	Prevailing wind direction, degrees (true)
					RM Young 05108-45

  12	Rainfall			Melted precipitation, mm
					Mesotech, MT-PA01D 8" heated, tipping rain bucket. Measures rainfall and melted snow/sleet. 
					Each tip of the bucket corresponds to 0.254mm of precipitation.

  13	Precipitation Snow		Change in average snow stake depth from the prior to the current day, cm. A negative change is recorded as 0.
					Five snow stakes located in the backyard. See Snowstakereadme.txt for more information.

  14	Depth at Snowstake		Average snow stake depth, cm
					Five snow stakes located in the backyard. See Snowstakereadme.txt for more information.

  15	Sea Surface Temperature		Average sea surface temperature, °C
					Aanderaa 4319A conductivity sensor located off the pier at 3.13m below MSL (WGS-84). Lat/lon: -64.77455869, -64.05558092

  16	Sea Ice				WMO sea ice observation. See Seaicereadme.txt for more information.

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CORRECTIONS

These reports have undergone two major corrections over the years. All files in /climatology/YYYY are corrected & updated; the original uncorrected files can be found in /climatology/old.

(1) July 2002
	Files corrected: April 1989 - June 2002
	A comprehensive reivew was performed of all reports and many significant issues were fixed. See readme.update for more information.

(2) June 2023
	Files corrected: March 2017 - July 2023
	Corrected a few miscellaneous issues:
	- YTD snowfall actually shows a number instead of blank
	- When the monthly total or YTD snowfall/rainfall values are zero, they display '0' instead of blank
	- Cleaned up alignment and extraneous spaces in "Palmer Station Weather Highlights" and "Column Titles" sections
	- In the daily table, when a value is missing for a given day, it now displays 'M' in that cell. Previously, the script would often just fill the cell with the same value from the previous day. (e.g: 5/12/17 wind, 8/28/22 pressure, 4/10/23 SST)
	- Implemented 2019 wind speed correction:
		Wind speeds and gusts had to be corrected between 2/28/2019 17:56 UTC - 11/20/2019 16:17 UTC due to the wrong propeller being installed on the BASE wind sensor. 
		The correction coefficient that was applied was 0.588.
	  The /observations files were corrected in December 2019, but the /climatology files weren't until June 2023.