South Pole Station's one-minute surface observations that contain wind direction, wind speed, temperature, dew point, altimeter reading, and sea level pressure data. These are produced on a minute by minute basis.
The file naming scheme is OMO MM-DD-YY.txt where OMO denotes one-minute observations, MM is the month, DD is the day, and YY is the year.
Between July 2020 and April 2024, no one minute data was made available. This was due to a new airport weather advisor system that was put into place. As of May 2024, one-minute observations have been made available again. Although this data does not include clean air measurements, it does include many of the key measurements useful to researchers. Files are no longer in a monthly format and instead are now in a daily METAR format. Observations are made each minute of each day in UTC. For help with METAR abbreviations and acronyms, please see the METAR Quick Reference Guide from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Weather Service.
Within each file, the format is as follows (left to right): day of year, month of year, year. Time in UTC. OMO: One Minute Observations. NZSP: Station identifier. Issuance time. AUTO: Automatic Observation. A three-digit true-north wind direction followed by wind speed in knots. Temperature / Dew point. Altimeter: A indicates inches of mercury. RMK: Remarks identifier. AO2: denotes it is an automated station with a precipitation discriminator. SLP: Sea Level Pressure in hPa. Hourly temperature and dew point. $: Marks that maintenance is needed on the system.
For July 2024, data is primarily incomplete from the 2nd to the 17th of the month. The only data available during this period was wind direction and speed. When able, NOAA's tower was used.
Files with the prefix "SKWY" contain one-minute observations from the Skiway tower located approximately 1000-1200 meters to the Grid South of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, at roughly the midpoint of the skiway.
Files with the prefix "CAIR" contain one-minute observations from the Clean Air tower located in the Clean Air sector, approximately 800 meters to the Grid North of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.