Australian Antarctic Automatic Weather Stations
Climate Data

This website provides surface meteorological data from the Australian Antarctic network of Automatic Weather Stations [AWS] in remote regions of East Antarctica.

These AWS were built by the Australian Antarctic Division's (AAD) then Glaciology Program with design and support by the then Science Technical Section of the AAD. Deployments were facilitated by the then Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition ([ANARE]; now the Australian Antarctic Program [AAP]) or our international collaborators.

The first set of stations were deployed by glacial traverse in 1982. From then the AWS site network expanded steadily, before funding cuts in the early 2000s ceased any further design improvements or new AWS builds. The 2014 AWS deployment at the Aurora Basin North made use of a previous reserve AWS frame.

Many of our AWS have been longlived, some providing data from the same location for several decades. Calibrated data sets can be downloaded from the data page.

Any use of the AAD's climate AWS data is to be acknowledged. The project is supported by the Australian Antarctic Science [AAS] project 4506 from July 2019 to June 2029, which serves as reference as well as being an acknowledgement for any data access or use.

If you find the data useful please send a brief email describing your project and any publications to petra.heil@utas.edu.au. Sharing your use of these data will help justify maintaining (or possibly rejuvenating) the AWS network.

The data have been checked and calibrated. Editing has been kept to the bare minimum. No guarantee is provided as to any error or uncertainty associated with these climate data sets. Note in particular that the height of the sensors changes with time due to snow accumulation. Snow accumulation rates vary from site to site.

Meteorological data from other Antarctic AWS installations are available from the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center, Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

If you have general inquiries regarding this dataset, email metadata@aad.gov.au.

For technical comments or queries contact petra.heil@utas.edu.au.