Three-decades of quality controlled Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) weather station data

Abstract

The Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) is a collection of automatic weather stations (AWS)  across the Greenland Ice Sheet. The first site was initiated in 1990, and the project has operated almost continuously since 1995, under the leadership of the late Pr. Konrad Steffen. The network consists of 19 long-running weather stations, and 14 AWS sites active under five years. As part of the continuation of the GC-Net by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), the AWS data have recently undergone a reprocessing with new attention to erroneous data filtering, correction and derivation of additional variables: continuous surface height, instrument heights, turbulent heat fluxes.  This new augmented GC-Net level 1 (L1) AWS dataset is now available at https://doi.org/10.22008/FK2/VVXGUT and will continue to be refined. The processing scripts, the latest data and a data-user forum are available at https://github.com/GEUS-Glaciology-and-Climate/GC-Net-level-1-data-processing. In addition to the AWS data, a comprehensive compilation of valuable metadata is provided: maintenance reports, yearly pictures of the stations and the moving station positions through time. This unique dataset provides more than 320 station-years of weather data of improved quality and is made available in compliance under FAIR open data and code principles.