Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was established by the United States Navy in the austral summer of 1956–1957. This dataset contains the complete record of meteorological observations from the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, February 1957 through February 2011 as reported in the local climate data (LCD) files. In cooperation with the South Pole Meteorological Office, this dataset has undergone a full quality control review in preparation for the 50-year climatology report found here:

Lazzara, M.A., L.M. Keller, T. Markle, and J. Gallagher (2012). Fifty-year Amundsen-Scott South Pole station surface climatology. Atmospheric Research, 118, 240-259, doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2012.06.027.

For a full station history of the South Pole, focusing on meteorological instrumentation used to produce this dataset, see:

Keller, L.M., Baker, K.A., Lazzara, M.A., and J. Gallagher (2009): A Comparison of Meteorological Observations from South Pole Station before and after Installation of a New Instrument Suite. J. Atmos. Oceanic Tech., 26, 1605-1613, DOI: 10.1175/2009JTECHA1220.1.

The columns of data in the files are as follows:

• Year
• Month Number (1 = January, 2 = February, etc.)
• Day of the month
• Time (in hour, minute, second format or hhmmss)
• Wind Direction (meteorological degrees)
• Wind Speed (meters per second or m/s)
• Visibility (meters or m)
• Temperature (Celsius or C)
• Station Pressure (millbars or mb/hectoPascalls or hPa)