Abstract
Abstract. Long-term, continuous in situ observations of the near-surface atmospheric boundary layer are critical for many weather and climate applications. Although there is a proliferation of surface stations globally, especially in and around populous areas, there are notably fewer tall meteorological towers with multiple instrumented levels. This is particularly true in remote and extreme environments such as the East Antarctic plateau. In the article, we present and analyze 10 years of data from six levels of meteorological instrumentation mounted on a 42 m tower located at Dome C, East Antarctica, near the Concordia research station, producing a unique climatology of the near-surface atmospheric environment (Genthon et al., 2021a, b). Monthly temperature and wind data demonstrate the large seasonal differences in the near-surface boundary layer dynamics, depending on the presence or absence of solar surface forcing. Strong vertical temperature gradients (inversions) frequently develop in calm, winter conditions, while vertical convective mixing occurs in the summer, leading to near-uniform temperatures along the tower. Seasonal variation in wind speed is much less notable at this location than the temperature variation as the winds are less influenced by the solar cycle; there are no katabatic winds as Dome C is quite flat. Harmonic analysis confirms that most of the energy in the power spectrum is at diurnal, annual and semi-annual timescales. Analysis of observational uncertainty and comparison to reanalysis data from the latest generation of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) reanalyses (ERA5) indicate that wind speed is particularly difficult to measure at this location. Data are distributed on the PANGAEA data repository at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932512 (Genthon et al., 2021a) and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932513 (Genthon et al., 2021b).
Highlights
Networks of automatic weather stations (AWSs), including those managed by the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center
Some of the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC) stations were deployed in the early 1980s, providing data that extend over 5 decades
The longest continuous meteorological observations occur near occupied scientific stations, the most extensive ones from stations that were established during the International Geophysical Year 7 decades ago
Summary
We present 10 years of in situ temperature and wind observations at Dome C from 2010 to 2019 at six observation levels distributed along a ∼ 42 m tower that are part of the CALVA-ACDC (in situ data for CALibration – VAlidation of meteorological and climate models and satellite retrievals, from Antarctic Coast to Dome C, acronym generally shortened to CALVA) project. Instrument models were selected initially for consistency with an observation system deployed at the coast of Adélie Land 2 years earlier (Genthon et al, 2007) This choice proved less than ideal for Dome C, as the HMP45C does not operate below −40 ◦C, and the Young 05106 is a marine-oriented aerovane with coated bearings that performed poorly in the extreme cold of Dome C winter. Harmonic analysis is performed using the correlogram method (Blackman and Tukey, 1958) as described in Ghil et al (2002), with data series tapering using a Bartlett window
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