Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station Runway Observations

File name convention: NZSPMMYY.txt (2001-present), NZIRMMYY.txt (2002-2003)

The column labels are:

  • Day

  • Time

  • Temperature (Temp;DegC)

  • Pressure (Pres; mb)

  • Altimeter (Alt;inHg)

  • Sea level pressure (Sea;mb)

  • Wind speed (Speed;kts)

  • Wind direction (Dir;T)

  • Wind gust (Gust;kts)

  • Peak wind (Peak;kts)

  • Minimum wind (Min;kts)

  • Maximum wind (Max;kts)

  • Relative humidity (RH;%)

  • Dew point (DewPt;DegC)

  • Visibility (Vis;m)

  • Vertical visibility (VVis;ft)

  • First cloud layer height (Cloud1;ft)

  • First cloud layer coverage condition (Cover1;ft)

  • Second cloud layer height (Cloud2;ft)

  • Second cloud layer coverage condition (Cover2;ft)

  • Third cloud layer height (Cloud3;ft)

  • Third cloud layer coverage condition (Cover3;ft)

  • Sky coverage (in oktas) (Sky;/8)

  • Cloud ceiling (Ceil;ft)

  • Sky conditions (SkyCond)

  • Surface conditions (Surf)

  • Horizon conditions (Horiz)

  • Present weather (PresWx)

  • Battery voltage (Batt)

  • Remarks

File name convention: NZSP_YYYYMM.xls (2003-2013)

Monthly runway files with daily, hourly runway surface observations and monthly climatological statistics.

As of January 1st, 2009, per request of the Meteorology Coordinator and McMurdo Weather Office, the practice of using zero (0) to report a sky cover of less than 1/8th was removed from the South Pole Meteorology Department’s Standard Operating Procedure. This practice was implemented back in the late 1990s and was taken from the Weather Service Operations Handbook #7. This station is to use the FMH-1 guideline which does not permit this practice. This change has no impact on observations and little impact on the station’s climatological records.

As of January 1st, 2009, per request of the Meteorology Coordinator and McMurdo Weather Office, BINOVC is no longer used within the remarks section (col. 14) of the MF1M-10A form. Instead, describing the sky condition as broken (BKN) with no sky condition remarks. If there is an overcast sky condition that has thin spots within it, the remark THN SPTS IOVC (thin spots, intermittent overcast) is used to describe the overcast condition.

Data

  • 2001.zip

    Size: 4.5 MiB, Format: ZIP

  • 2002.zip

    Size: 39 KiB, Format: ZIP

  • 2003.zip

    Size: 10.4 MiB, Format: ZIP

  • 2004.zip

    Size: 5.9 MiB, Format: ZIP

Additional Information

Author South Pole Meteorology Office
Maintainer Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center
Version 1.0
Last Updated August 14, 2026, 15:30 (UTC)
Created August 13, 2026, 15:59 (UTC)
Citation South Pole Meteorology Office: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station Runway Observations. AMRDC Data Repository, accessed DD-MM-YYYY, https://doi.org/10.48567/2qxk-8x45.
Collection Begin Date 2001-01-01
Collection End Date Ongoing
DOI https://doi.org/10.48567/2qxk-8x45
Format txt, xls