Antarctic weather measurements and monitoring

People who work in Antarctica need to know about the weather for flights and other forms of travel, planning and operating field sites and for overall safety.

Knowing about Antarctic weather is also important for non-residents. Although it’s a long way away, Antarctica and the rest of the world are globally connected via atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

Global weather models require observational data from Antarctica to make accurate forecasts. This is especially important for locations nearest to Antarctica – Aotearoa, Australia and southern parts of Africa and South America.

The data is also used to calibrate and validate measurements made by satellites. Many of these measurements inform our understanding of climate change and sea-level rise.

Professor Adrian McDonald, University of Canterbury, uses on-site weather stations in Antarctica to calibrate and validate satellite measurements.

Jargon alerts

• Validate means to confirm or verify something.

• Calibrate means to check or standardise a measuring device.

Questions for discussion

• Why is it important to have more than one method to measure the weather?

• Why are the weather stations placed along the satellite tracks?

Transcript

Professor Adrian McDonald

I spend roughly 2 or 3 weeks in Antarctica nearly every year. We go to Antarctica mainly to put instruments out into the field to make validation measurements for satellites. So for instance, we distribute a large set of weather stations that use mobile phone technology to talk to each other, so they’re a smart measurement system. And that smart measurement system’s distributed along satellite tracks so that we can compare the satellite measurements, which is over a large region usually, with a set of weather stations to get good reference information.

Acknowledgements

Professor Adrian McDonald, University of Canterbury

Antarctic footage and stills, courtesy of Adrian McDonald and Daniel Price