PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA PALMOS AUTOMATED WEATHER DATA SYSTEM PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA A Description of the Archived Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated July 2006 by GEG. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------