PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA
PALMOS AUTOMATED WEATHER DATA SYSTEM
PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA
A Description of the Archived Data
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Updated April 2016 by S. Fons
Data files and station locations:
ARYYMMDD.100- The weather station on Gamage Point
ARYYMMDD_BASE.txt - The new weather station in the "backyard" of Palmer Station
ARYYMMDD_AWS1.txt - The weather station on Wauwermans Islands (8 miles from Palmer Station) - Installed Oct 31 2015
ARYYMMDD_AWS2.txt - The weather station in the Joubins Island group, on Howard Island (Lat -64.786987 Long -64.360658)
ARYYMMDD_AWS3.txt
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Updated July 2006 by GEG.
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File name: ARyymmdd.xxx, where AR stands for Archive, and xxx is the
station number.
1st row: Column Headings. The units for each heading are listed below,
followed by a general description of the data, if any.
Col Heading Units
--- ----------------------- ----------------------------------------
1 Date yyyy/mm/dd
Daylight savings time may be factored in by the Windows
operating system, which has been found to make erroneous
decisions about when Chilean DST (Palmer's time zone)
actually occurs. So the local time is typically correct,
but possibly off by +/- 1 hour around the DST changes.
2 Time hh:mm:ss (UTC)
3 Unit ID text
An arbitrary number, typically the default of 100 or blank.
4 WS avg 2min meters/sec
Wind speed, 2 minute average.
5 WD avg 2min degrees
Wind direction, 2 minute average.
6 WGS avg 10min meters/sec
Wind gust speed, 10 minute average.
7 WGD avg 10min degrees
Wind gust direction, 10 minute average.
8 WG avg 10min meters/sec
Wind gust, 10 minute average.
9 Air Temp degrees C
10 Rel Humidity percent RH
11 Dew Point degrees C
12 Pyranometer watts/m^2
LI-COR model LI-200SA pyranometer.
13 Quantum micro-moles per second*meter squared (umole/[s*m^2])
LI-COR model LI-190SA quantum sensor.
14 Air Pressure millibars
15 Snow Level cm
16 Melted precipitation mm
Cumulative throughout each day.
17 PW Current code number
Present weather. An Optical Scientific Inc. OWI-130 Weather
Identifier and Visibility Sensor. The "present weather"
information is returned in WMO WX coded format for the highest
present weather code during the past 60 seconds (column 19),
15 minutes (column 20), and 60 minutes (column 21). The
codes are as follows:
WX Code WMO WX Code Description
------- -----------------------
00 No significant weather
04 Haze
10 Mist
20 Fog detected in last hour
21 Precip detected in last hour
22 Drizzle detected in last hour
23 Rain detected in last hour
24 Snow detected in last hour
30 Fog
41 Precipitation, slight or moderate
47 Freezing precip, slight or moderate
51 Drizzle, not freezing, slight
52 Drizzle, not freezing, moderate
53 Drizzle, not freezing, heavy
54 Drizzle, freezing, slight
55 Drizzle, freezing, moderate
56 Drizzle, freezing, heavy
57 Drizzle and rain, slight
58 Drizzle and rain, moderate or heavy
61 Rain, not freezing, slight
62 Rain, not freezing, moderate
63 Rain, not freezing, heavy
64 Rain, freezing, slight
65 Rain, freezing, moderate
66 Rain, freezing, heavy
67 Rain/snow, slight
68 Rain/snow, moderate or heavy
71 Snow, slight
72 Snow, moderate
73 Snow, heavy
-- Start-up code
ER Error condition
CL Lenses need to be cleaned (only reported
when no precipitation)
For further information see:
"ZENO-3200 Antarctic Raytheon Palmer Station System Manual",
Version 1.0, May 10 2001, page B-2.
"OWI-130 Series WIVIS Weather Identifier and Visibility Sensor
User's Guide", Version dated 7/31/00, Sections 4.2.3 ("D
Polling", assumed to be the method the Zeno DA software is
using) and 4.3.1 ("D" Poll - WMO Code Format).
20 PW 15min code number
Present weather, 15 minutes ago. Same WX codes as column 19.
21 PW 60min code number
Present weather, 60 minutes ago. Same WX codes as column 19.
22 PW Vis meters
Tops out at 3100m (10000ft). Early data may be limited to 1100m.
The visibility from the Belfort instrument (col 23) is
recommended instead of this value.
23 Visibility meters
Measured with a Belfort model 6100 visibility sensor.
24 CBase 1 feet
Cloud base, lower lever, measured with a Mesotech Ceilometer
model CBME40. The value will be zero if there's no return sigal,
meaning there's either no clouds for the instrument to measure
(clear sky) or there's no sharply defined return signal because
of fog or precipitation. This device has a long data accumulation
interval and occasionally does not produce a result in time
for the weather system's minute by minute data archival; when
a value is not received from the ceilometer, a default value of
-1000000 is used. If the instrument is broken a small negative
value will be shown for all cloud base and vertical visibility.
25 CBase 2 feet
Cloud base, middle level.
26 CBase 3 feet
Cloud base, upper level.
27 Vertical Visibility feet
Also measured with the CBME40. Typically zero if any cloud
base height is returned.
28 Batt Vdc volts
Voltage for the data acquisition unit's backup battery.
29 BIT bit-level error code (hex)
If there are no errors this value should be zero. Error codes
are additive; i.e., code 0300 would correspond to both a
possible wind speed error (0100) and wind vane error (0200).
The codes, as specified by the manufacturer, are:
Hex code Error
-------- -----
0001 System reset
0002 Real-time clock suspect
0004 Logging memory initialized
0008 Serial device communication failure
0010 EEPROM suspect
0020 18-bit Analog to Digital Converter suspect
0040 12-bit Analog to Digital Converter suspect
0080 Clock changed for temperature compensation
0000 01xx Wind Speed Suspect
0000 02xx Wind Vane Suspect
0000 04xx Snow Level Sensor Suspect
0000 08xx Air Temp Suspect
0000 1xxx Barometric Pressure
0000 2xxx Relative Humidity
0000 4xxx Battery Voltage Suspect
0000 8xxx Pyranometer Suspect
0001 xxxx Quantum Sensor Suspect
0002 xxxx Present weather
0004 xxxx Visibility
0008 xxxx Ceilometer
The *.100 files are no longer available starting October 2017. There are
4 new files that have been transmitted that provide the daily Palmer
observations: AWS1, AWS2, AWS3 and BASE files.
AWS1 and the BASE files are available starting November 2015.
AWS2 files are available starting March 2016 and AWS3 files are available
starting August 2016.
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