The macroscale metadata document is 100+ pages pertaining to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison Area Technical College’s Automatic Weather Station (AWS) network in Antarctica. The purpose of this metadata is to collect general information at each of the 50+ AWS locations to further understand the localized area and the effectiveness of their placement. Many of the variables (listed below) use precise quality-controlled data from our network, but others, such as distances to geographical features and other AWS locations, are estimated from the WGS84 Map created by the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2016. These estimates are limited by the precision of the contour intervals, age of the map, and other factors that are beyond the control of our group. The details at each location are supplemented by first person accounts from the AMRDC/AWS team and photos taken of each AWS during deployments to Antarctica. The photos are currently available for viewing at https://amrdc.ssec.wisc.edu/aws.
The following documents contain:
- README- AWS Metadata: Description of the metadata’s formatting, the methods used in the compilation process, and other pieces of information deemed necessary for reading the document.
- Table of Contents- AWS Metadata: AWS sites are given a page number by alphabetical order.
- Metadata Main Document- AWS Metadata: The main document that contains the variables (listed below) at each AWS.
The following variables are addressed in the metadata record:
- Location on the Continent
- Location Relative to Geographical Features (km)
- Location Relative to Other AWS Locations (km)
- Topographic Relief of Surrounding Region (m and km)
- Snow and Terrain Observations
- Maximum/Minimum Temperature (°C)
- Maximum Wind Speed (m/s)
- Maximum/Minimum Pressure (hPa)
- Coordinates of AWS and Latitude/Longitude Shift (°)
- Elevation (m)
- Miscellaneous Notes
- Purpose