the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 15 Apr 2025
IMAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995–2022)
Abstract. In cooperation with multiple institutes, the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU) at Utrecht University has operated automated weather stations (AWS) at 19 locations on the Antarctic ice sheet from 1995 through 2022. Besides standard meteorological measurements (pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed & direction), these stations include measured shortwave and longwave radiation components and surface height, thereby allowing for the reliable in situ quantification of the surface energy balance (SEB) and surface mass balance (SMB) at (two-)hourly temporal resolution. This unique dataset can be used for climate model evaluation and development, for the validation of remote sensing products, for the quantification of long term climatological changes, for the interpretation of ice cores, and for process understanding in general. This paper describes the dataset and the applied measurement corrections. The total dataset contains 154 station-years of data, of which 65 % include both SEB & SMB observations, and is available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.974080 (Van Tiggelen et al, 2024).
- Preprint
(6268 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 22 May 2025)
-
RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-88', Ian Allison, 07 May 2025
reply
This preprint provides an excellent description of more than 20 years of high quality and valuable Antarctic surface meteorological data from the IMAU automatic weather station (AWS) network. These AWS were designed to enable estimation of the ice sheet surface energy and mass balances. The publication clearly outlines what variables were measured, what instrumentation was used, how the data were processed and how corrections were made. Clear links are given to how the data can be accessed and to the software codes used to pre-process and correct the measurements. I particularly liked the simple flag assigned to each data sample alerting of potential problems in each of the measured variables.
The IMAU Antarctic AWS network is one of several that provide Antarctic surface meteorological data. Others include those of the University of Wisconsin, the Australian Antarctic Division and the Chinese Antarctic Programme. These are mentioned and acknowledged in the preprint. But I think that the larger Antarctic AWS data set can be more directly referenced with a few small changes that do not length the manuscript (the focus of which clearly should be the IMAU network). I will suggest ways to do this, plus other small specific and technical comments in my more detailed reviewer comments.
This manuscript clearly fits the objectives and standards of ESSD and should be published.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-88-RC1
Data sets
IMAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995-2022) Maurice van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.974080
Model code and software
MATLAB scripts used to process the IMAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995-2022) Maurice van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15101447
IMAU-IceEddie: Python scripts used to process the IMAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995-2022) Maurice van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15058515
IMAU-pyEBM: Python energy balance model for snow and ice Maurice van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15082294
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 201 | 28 | 4 | 233 | 5 | 5 |
- HTML: 201
- PDF: 28
- XML: 4
- Total: 233
- BibTeX: 5
- EndNote: 5
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1