Antarctic satellite composite imagery, 2015.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison creates composite satellite imagery over the Antarctic and adjacent Southern Ocean as a part of the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center and Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center projects. The imagery is generated by combining geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites via a mosaic process outlined in Lazzara et al., 2003, Lazzara et al., 2011, and Kohrs et al., 2014. The composites are made in 5 spectral channels: infrared window (~10 micron), longwave infrared (~12.0 microns), shortwave infrared (~3.8 microns), water vapor (~6.7 microns), and visible (~0.65 microns). The temporal resolution increases from 3-hourly to 1-hourly (switch taking place from 2009 to 2013 depending on spectral channel). The spatial resolution increases from 10 km to the current 4 km resolution over the lifetime of the project. The imagery is made available in McIDAS AREA, netCDF, and JPEG file formats.

Kohrs, Richard A., Lazzara, Matthew A., Robaidek, Jerrold O., Santek, David A. and Knuth, Shelley L.. Global satellite composites - 20 years of evolution. Atmospheric Research, Volume 135, 2014, pp.8-34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2013.07.023.

Lazzara, Matthew A.; Coletti, Alex and Diedrich, Benjamin L.. The possibilities of polar meteorology, environmental remote sensing, communications and space weather applications from Artificial Lagrange Orbit. Advances in Space Research, Volume 48, Issue 11, 2011, pp.1880-1889, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2011.04.026.

Lazzara, Matthew A.; Keller, Linda M.; Stearns, Charles R.; Thom, Jonathan E. and Weidner, George A.. Antarctic satellite meteorology: Applications for weather forecasting. Monthly Weather Review, Volume 131, Issue 2, 2003, pp.371-383, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(2003)1312.0.CO;2.

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Additional Information

Maintainer Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center
Version 1.0
Last Updated December 17, 2025, 17:04 (UTC)
Created July 14, 2022, 15:10 (UTC)
Categories Satellite imagery
Citation Antarctic Meteorological Research and Data Center, 2015: Antarctic Satellite Composite Imagery, 2015. AMRDC Data Repository, accessed DD-MM-YYYY, https://doi.org/10.48567/rm3g-be40.
Collection Begin Date 2015-01-01
Collection End Date 2015-12-31
DOI https://doi.org/10.48567/rm3g-be40
Data Quality Quality-controlled
NSF Award(s) 1141908, 1535632
Principal Investigator(s) Matthew Lazzara, Linda Keller