Preprocessing Antarctic Weather Station (AWS) data in python

There are many sources providing atmospheric weather station data for the Antarctic continent. However, variable naming, timestamps and data types are highly variable between the different sources. The published python code intends to make processing of different AWS sources from Antarctica easier. For all datasets that are taken into account variables are renamed in a consistent way. Data from different sources can then be handled in one consistent python dictionary.

The following data sources are taken into account:

• AAD: Australian Antarctic Division (https://data.aad.gov.au/aws)
• ACECRC: Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre by the Australian Antarctic Division
• AMRC: Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (ftp://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/aws/q1h/)
• BAS: British Antarctic Survey (ftp://ftp.bas.ac.uk/src/ANTARCTIC_METEOROLOGICAL_DATA/AWS/; https://legacy.bas.ac.uk/met/READER/ANTARCTIC_METEOROLOGICAL_DATA/)
• CLIMANTARTIDE: Antarctic Meteo-Climatological Observatory by the italian National Programme of Antarctic Research (https://www.climantartide.it/dataaccess/index.php?lang=en)
• IMAU: Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (Lazzara et al., 2012), https://www.projects.science.uu.nl/iceclimate/aws/antarctica.ph
• JMA: Japan Meteorological Agency (https://www.data.jma.go.jp/antarctic/datareport/index-e.html)
• NOAA: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (https://gml.noaa.gov/aftp/data/meteorology/in-situ/spo/)
• Other/AWS_PE: Princess Elisabeth (PE), KU Leuven, Prof. N. van Lipzig, personal communication
• Other/DDU_transect: Stations D-17 and D-47 (in transect between Dumont d’Urville and Dome C, Amory, 2020)
• PANGAEA: World Data Center (e.g. König-Langlo, 2012)

Important notes

• Information about data sources is available. Some downloading scripts are included in the provided code. However, users should make sure to comply with the data providers terms and conditions.
• Given changing download options of the differnent institutions the above links may not permanently work and data has to be retrieved by the user of this dataset.
• No quality control is applied in the provided preprocessing software - quality control is up to the user of the datasets. Some dataset are quality controlled by the owner.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the data providers for making the data publicly available or providing them upon request. Full acknowledgements can be found in Gerber et al., submitted.

References

Amory, C. (2020). “Drifting-snow statistics from multiple-year autonomous measurements in Adélie Land, East Antarctica”. The Cryosphere, 1713–1725. doi: 10.5194/tc-14-1713-2020

Gerber, F., Sharma, V. and Lehning, M.: CRYOWRF - a validation and the effect of blowing snow on the Antarctic SMB, JGR - Atmospheres, submitted.

König-Langlo, G. (2012). “Continuous meteorological observations at Neumayer station (2011-01)”. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, PANGAEA, doi: 10.1594/PANGAEA. 775173