A portable Doppler radar (PDR) was deployed to Phoenix Airfield (NZFX) for the United States Antarctic Program during the 2019-2020 main body field season. The PDR was an EWR Radar System model E700 XD, provided by the United States Air Force for a trial basis to assist with aircraft operations in the Ross Island region. The PDR was deployed in late October 2019. A hardware issue occurred in late November 2019 and the radar was effectively non-operational by early December. A repair was not able to be made to the PDR until late January 2020 and by that time the PDF was in preparation for the end of the 2019 – 2020 main body field season. The following data is an archive of the radar products extending from 23 October to 3 December 2019. This archive was completed and is posted as a part of funding provided to the University of Colorado – Boulder from the National Science Foundation (Grant: OPP 2001430).
The installed PDR at Phoenix Airfield was a EWR Radar Systems E700 XD. The E700 XD is an X-Band, Doppler radar intended for military use and is easily deployable. The radar is operated using the Vaisala IRIS software, which was originally developed by Sigmet. EWR provided their WeatherScout software that provides a user-friendly front end to the radar operations. The radar was operated by personnel from DIGITALiBiz of Charleston, South Carolina, which is a contractor of Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) for operational meteorology of the United States Antarctic Program.
There are two types of datasets that are archived from the PDR deployed to Phoenix Airfield. The first is a collection of JPG images and referred to as “Images”. The second is the equivalent of NEXRAD Level III data and referred to as “Products”. Details on each of these products are provided below. All of the data has been archived into .tar.gz files in daily interval. For each data type there is also a single .tar.gz file that includes all of the files for that data type spanning the entire data collection period. There are sample views provided below for all of the Image types. There are no previews for the Products.
There was no quality control applied to the data.
More information on the project can be found at the USAP Data Center: https://www.usap-dc.org/view/project/p0010226.
