Ten years of shielded ventilated atmospheric temperature observation on a 45-m tower at Dome C, East Antarctic plateau

DOI

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 Eastern Antarctic plateau. In the article, we present and analyze 10 years (2010-2019) of data from 6 levels of meteorological instrumentation mounted on a 45-m tower located at Dome C, East Antarctica near the Concordia research station, producing a unique climatology of the near-surface environment. Large seasonal differences are evident in the monthly mean temperature and wind data, 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 scales. Analysis of observational uncertainty and comparison to reanalysis data from ERA-5 indicate that wind speed is particularly difficult to measure at this location.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932512
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5731-2021
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3450
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrd.50128
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932513
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/2017MS001184
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2998
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.932512
Provenance
Creator Genthon, Christophe ORCID logo; Veron, Dana; Vignon, Etienne ORCID logo; Six, Delphine; Dufresne, Jean Louis ORCID logo; Madeleine, Jean-Baptiste; Sultan, Emmanuelle; Forget, François
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2021
Funding Reference Institut Polaire Français Paul Emile Victor https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004796 Crossref Funder ID 1013 Antartic field data for CALibration and VAlidation of meteorological and climate models and satellite retrievals, Antarctic Coast to Dome C
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 1199618 data points
Discipline Atmospheric Sciences; Geosciences; Meteorology; Natural Sciences
Spatial Coverage (123.350 LON, -75.100 LAT); Dome C, Antarctica