########################################################################### # Notice on the use of Antarctic Meteorological Research Center data sets # ########################################################################### # The Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC) collects, archives # # and provides Antarctic meteorological observational data to the # # community and public for research, logistic, and educational activities.# # The AMRC requests acknowledgement for use of the data in any published # # work. See http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/acknowledgement.html for details on # # how to acknowledge AMRC data, displays or information. # # If the AMRC data are critical to the work, co-authorship may be # # appropriate. Please contact the AMRC in such a case. # # # # AMRC Contact Information: # # Address: 947 Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences Building # # 1225 West Dayton Street # # Madison, Wisconsin, USA 53706 # # Telephone: +1 (608) 262-0436 # # Fax: +1 (608) 263-6738 # # E-mail: amrc@ssec.wisc.edu # # Web: http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/ # # FTP: ftp://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/ # # McIDAS ADDE: Group AMRC and ARCHIVE on aws.ssec.wisc.edu # # RAMADDA: https://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/repository/ # # Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AMRCAWS # # Twitter: http://twitter.com/antmet # # YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/AMRCantmet # # Wikipedia: # # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Meteorological_Research_Center # # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Automatic_Weather_Stations_Project # # # Updated: 16 July 2013 # # # ########################################################################### The data on this site is in three different formats, each of which is detailed below: The large data files titled "antarctica.##" found in the 1980-1993 sub- directories of pub/miscellaneous/raob are in a raw text format. A warning: the files are anywhere from 5mb-12mb in size. This data has a header for each site, followed by 6 columns of data. The number listed after "STNM=" in the header is the WMO number for the site (McMurdo, for example, is 89664). The information after TIME is listed as yymmdd/zzzz where yy is the year, mm is the month, dd is the day, and zzzz is either 0000Z or 1200Z when the data was taken (in hours and minutes). The data is in six columns; PRES is air pressure in mb, TEMP is the air temperature in degrees Celsius, DWPT is the dew point, DRCT is the wind direction, SPED is the wind speed, and HGHT is the geopotential height in meters. ----------------------------------------------------------- The data for 1994-on is available for both South Pole and McMurdo. The McMurdo data is in the unsorted format mailed to us from NSFA. The data files are organized by day and are less than 20K apiece. These files also have headers, so it should be obvious how the data is organized once the files are viewed. As can be seen, several different types of data are provided, though all for McMurdo only (as opposed to the 1980-1993 data). ALT GEOPM is the geopotential height in meters, DIR DEG is the wind direction, SPEED KTS is the wind speed in knots, TEMP C and DEW DEP C are the air temperature and dew point in degrees Celsius, PRESS MB is the air pressure in mb, and RH % is the relative humidity in percent. Note that the files for February 10th, 1996 through February 29th, 1996 were converted from a word processor format, and may not exactly exemplify the spacing found in most of the other 1994-on data. The file names are constructed as follows: yymmddhh.mcu where yy is the year, mm is the month, dd is the day, and hh is the hour. The initial headers within the file also contain date and time information, but these are less reliable than the file names themselves. Please note a format change which takes place in late November 1998 on the .mcu files and the absence of high resolution radiosonde data after this time. The South Pole data, in roughly the same file format as the 94-98 McMurdo data, comes in monthly .uad files which can be found in the same directories as the McMurdo data. File name convention is simply: mmyy.uad where mm is the month and yy is the year. We now also have permission to redistribute high resolution radiosonde data from McMurdo and South Pole; available data for 1994-on can be found in subdirectories of pub/raob/hires. Data of both types for South Pole for 1993 are also available. ---------------------------------------------------------- The data prior to 1980 is organized by month, and is data for McMurdo only. Each launch has a two line header, mentioning the station, year, month, day, and hour, followed by the information displayed in the eight columns that follow. ---------------------------------------------------------- The big datasets for 1980-1993 came to us via NCAR and were compiled by Tom Parish at the University of Wyoming. Later unsorted data is sent to us directly or collected by AMRC with the cooperation of the bases and hasn't undergone any preprocessing. Earlier data was compiled for us by Shawn Smith, a former graduate student. Questions can be mailed to amrc@ssec.wisc.edu If you would like to be on a mailing list that would notify you of changes and additions to the radiosonde data sets within these directories, please send email to amrc@ssec.wisc.edu Please include your name, your e-mail address and your institution/address.