Air and permafrost temperatures at Mount Melbourne (1989–98)

Abstract

Recent meteorological studies suggest a mixed pattern of climate change in Antarctica: a general cooling of the interior continent and warming in the Antarctic Peninsula over the past several decades (e.g. Comiso 2000, Doran et al. 2002, Vaughan et al. 2003). This note presents 10 years of continuous recording of air and permafrost temperature at Mount Melbourne (74°21′S, 164°42′E) in Northern Victoria Land. Mount Melbourne is a quiescent volcano belonging to a wide-spread volcanic belt which has developed since the Oligocene along the western margin of the Ross Sea, parallel to the Transantarctic Mountains (Fig. 1a). In 1988 a tilt network composed of five continuous recording sensors each equipped with four temperature sensors (Fig. 1b) was installed within the framework of Italian PRNA between the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989 (Bonaccorso et al. 1995).