the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Quality-controlled meteorological datasets from SIGMA automatic weather stations in northwest Greenland, 2012–2020
Motoshi Nishimura
Teruo Aoki
Masashi Niwano
Sumito Matoba
Tomonori Tanikawa
Tetsuhide Yamasaki
Satoru Yamaguchi
Koji Fujita
Abstract. In situ meteorological data are essential to better understand ongoing environmental changes in the Arctic. Here, we present a dataset of quality-controlled meteorological observations by two automatic weather stations in northwest Greenland from July 2012 to the end of August 2020. The stations were installed in an accumulation area on the Greenland Ice Sheet (SIGMA-A site, 1490 m a.s.l.) and near the equilibrium line of the Qaanaaq Ice Cap (SIGMA-B site, 944 m a.s.l.). We describe the two-step sequence of quality-control procedures that we used to create increasingly reliable datasets by masking erroneous data records. We analyzed the resulting 2012–2020 time series of air temperature, positive degree-days, snow height, surface albedo, and histograms of longwave radiation (a proxy of cloud formation frequency). We found that snow height increased and albedo remained steady at the SIGMA-A site, whereas high air temperatures and clear-sky conditions prevailed while snow height and albedo decreased in the summers of 2015, 2019, and 2020 at the SIGMA-B site. Therefore, it appears that these weather conditions led to notable snow height degradation at the SIGMA-B site but not at the SIGMA-A site. We anticipate that this quality-control method and these datasets will aid in climate studies of northwest Greenland as well as contribute to the advancement of broader polar climate studies.
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Motoshi Nishimura et al.
Status: open (until 23 Jun 2023)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2023-116', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 May 2023
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This article is appropriate to support the publication of this data set. I was able to download the data and plot samples. I felt the accompanying metadata files and the readme files did a nice job in explaining the dataset. I felt this submission was of high quality and I would trust the dataset as useful.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-116-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2023-116', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 May 2023
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Review of ESSD manuscript
Quality-controlled meteorological datasets from SIGMA 2 automatic weather stations in northwest Greenland, 2012– 3 2020
by Nishimura and others
General
This paper presents approximately eight years of quality-controlled datasets of two automatic weather stations (AWS) on the ice in NW Greenland, one situated on the contiguous ice sheet and one on a detached coastal ice cap. This region is climatologically very interesting as well as rapidly changing, as described in numerous recent publications. These AWS data are highly valuable for process understanding, climate monitoring, and model evaluation/satellite validation, and deserve to be published. The data have been extensively quality controlled as described in this paper. The resulting dataset appears clean and robust and useful for users. My main problem is the non-concise and often unclear writing style in this paper, which makes the paper hard to digest and, more seriously, in places leads to confusion. Although it is a relatively minor remark, it will require a significant effort by the authors to remedy this.
Major comments
I would like to encourage the authors to critically go through the MS text again to improve the readability and accuracy of the text. The writing can be more concise and precise. Some examples (not exhaustive) are listed below as minor comments. And in the process please aim for a shorter paper.Table 2 would be better placed at the very beginning or end of the text.
This paper presents an observational dataset, so it is more logical to start the introduction with the history and importance of in situ observations in Greenland.
Section 5 also discusses derived data, such as positive degree days, lapse rates but also average seasonal cycles, etc. Not sure such (admittedly basic) analysis has a place in a data journal.
Minor comments:l. 17: an -> the
l. 25: ""snow height degradation", unclear, do you mean snow height decrease or snow metamorphism?
l. 37: "however, the existing in situ meteorological data are insufficient for these purposes", unclear, do you mean that current observational coverage is insufficient? It is quite good in Greenland when compared to e.g., Antarctica.
l. 51: "analytical values of various numerical models", unclear, do you mean "output of numerical models"?
l. 54: please explain 'sensor noise' and 'natural factors'.
l. 56: please explain QC or better simply write out throughout.
l. 76: " It is considered" the fact that the surface consists of accumulating snow/firn proves that this is the accumulation area.
Fig. 1a: I suggest including the GC-Net stations as well.
l. 78: "is supposed to be", unclear, was it intended to be at the equilibrium line, or is it thought to be there?
l. 80: " The surface condition at this site varies (see Fig. 2), and surface melting has occurred in warm years". Obviously, surface melting occurs at the equilibrium line. Did you perhaps mean "net ablation"?
l. 97, Figure 2: mainmast -> main mast (also elsewhere in text).
Figure 2: why is date given only in lower plots?
l. 113: cyclone battery?
Table 1 caption typo: observaion -> observation
Table 1: accuracy of wind direction, unclear what is meant here.
Table 1: It appears that for the radiation measurement the sensitivity rather than the accuracy is listed?
l. 131: some, not all?
l. 133: "Because the vertical radiant flux against the inclined surface needed to accurately calculate the surface albedo and surface energy balance is affected by the sloping surface at the SIGMA-B site, we calculated the slope-corrected downward shortwave radiation (SWd_slope) from the corresponding observations using the correction method in Jonsell et al. (2003) and Hock and Holmgren (2005)." This sentence is unclear.
Table 2: in line 147, 'transmittance' is indicated by lowercase 't_r', in Table 2 we see an uppercase 'T_r' which is called 'transmissivity'. Are these the same things?
Section 4.1: I suggest listing all range values in Table 3 and not to repeat these in the text, to improve readability. Instead, for each correction it would be nice to mention the % data affected.
l. 214: I do not understand this correction: why giving a clearly wrong measurement an arbitrary physical value?
l. 224 and 236: 'electrical noise', what is this? Earlier you used 'sensor noise', is this the same?
l. 226: why can alfa_sw and alfa_nir not be lower than 0.95 and 0.90? Or do you mean 'higher'?
l. 232: Are these the conditions for which the data are flagged as erroneous? It seems to be the other way around.
l. 237-240: You give the data a physical value (zero), would it not be better to not do that unless for instance when SW_TOA < 0?
l. 249: the surface consists of snow or ice, so how can its temperature become positive?
l. 299: Six hours of calm weather is not impossible, why this arbitrary value? Why not use the wind speed at the other AWS to check this?
l. 355: Why is wet snow treated differently at both sites?
Figure 4, 6, 8: Consider reducing symbol size.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-116-RC2
Motoshi Nishimura et al.
Data sets
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-A site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.1 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, A. Tsushima, K. Fujita, Y. Iizuka, and Y. Kurosaki http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041301
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-A site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.2 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, A. Tsushima, K. Fujita, Y. Iizuka, and Y. Kurosaki http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041302
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-A site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.3 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, A. Tsushima, K. Fujita, Y. Iizuka, and Y. Kurosaki http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041303
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-B site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.1 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, K. Fujita http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041304
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-B site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.2 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, K. Fujita http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041305
Quality-controlled datasets of Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at SIGMA-B site from 2012 to 2020: Level 1.3 M. Nishimura, T. Aoki, M. Niwano, S. Matoba, T. Tanikawa, S. Yamaguchi, T. Yamasaki, K. Fujita http://doi.org/10.17592/001.2022041306
Motoshi Nishimura et al.
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