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Palmer Station Datasets

Palmer Station is located at 64°46' S, 64°03' W, on a protected harbor on the southwestern coast of Anvers Island off the Antarctica Peninsula. Palmer is the only U.S. Antarctic station north of the Antarctic Circle. The temperature is mild, with monthly averages ranging from minus 10°C in July and August to 2°C in January and February. The annual mean is minus 3°C. The extreme range is minus 25°C to 11.6°C. It has rained every month at Palmer.

The station, built on solid rock, consists of two major buildings and three small ones, plus two large fuel tanks, a helicopter pad, and pile pier that was built in 2022. Construction of the two main buildings was completed in 1968, replacing a prefabricated wood structure ("Old Palmer," established in 1965) two kilometers away across Arthur Harbor. Old Palmer has been disassembled and removed from Antarctica. The maximum population of Palmer Station is 45 in the summer. Wintering population is about 18 people. Ships generally resupply and exchange personnel every other month between October and June. Many science projects are supported vis small boat operations in the surrounding 12 miles.

Weather Observation Timeline Palmer Station, Antarctica

This document presents a high-level timeline of the weather observation program at Palmer Station from 1989 – present. Information was sourced from old logs, SOPs, and emails. For any questions or corrections, contact the Palmer Research Associate (pal.ra@usap.gov).

Last updated 20 September 2023 by Ben Rosen-Filardo

  • 1989 Apr 01

Start of 4x daily manual weather observations (00UT, 06UT, 12UT, 18UT)

  • 1990 Mar 17

Start of snow stake measurements on Gamage Point. This was a single stake located between the Aquarium and Pump House. Due to the location near the decking, snow may have been shoveled onto the snow stake. A hand rail on the deck was used to determine New Snow for the day at the same time.

  • 1991 Nov 01

Start of WMO sea ice observations. These are WMO physical observations made by the RA and could be subjective. For more information, see the README located in /seasurfobs_snowacc.

  • 1996 April 01

Method changes for calculating the average daily temperature. Old method: Average of minimum and maximum temperatures. New method: Average of four synoptic temperature readings. (Note: Some logs say this happened on September 1, not April 1.)

  • 1996 Nov 14

New maximum indicating thermometer installed. Sometime in 1994 – 1996, the maximum indicating thermometer broke, and maximum temperatures begun being taken from a Davis weather station instead. With the installation of this new thermometer, the Davis stopped being used.

  • 1997 Mar 27

New barometer installed (Belfort 8256), replacing the Wallace & Tiernan aneroid.

  • 2000 Nov 01

0600 UT manual observation abolished due to limited personnel availability. To contribute to the daily averages: 0600 UT barometric pressure now read from barograph; 0600 UT temperature now read from ENPAWS (an old experimental automated weather station that I haven’t found much info about)

  • 2001 Nov 01

PALMOS AWS, located on Gamage Point, begins reporting

  • 2002 Feb 23

0600 UT temperature now read from PALMOS rather than ENPAWS

  • 2003 May 20

Pressure now read from PALMOS rather than the aneroid barometer. Pressure values from the PALMOS barometer are on average 2.5 mb higher due to the different location, different altitude, and different calibration.

  • 2003 Sep 01

Temperature now read from PALMOS rather than manual thermometers. (Note: Some logs say this happened on October 1, not September 1.)

  • 2003 Oct

Wind now read from PALMOS rather than old Bendix wind monitor

  • 2003 Nov 22

PALMOS display now used for visibility distances, rather than manual observation

  • 2003 Dec 18

After a two year overlap between manual weather observations and PALMOS, the manual observations are discontinued. The only manual data collection remaining is snow stake depth, sea ice coverage, land snow coverage, and sea water temperature, all of which are recorded daily at 1800 UT.

  • 2004 Oct 06

Sampling interval changed from one to two minutes

  • 2015 Sep 11

PAWS, located in the backyard, begins reporting. Data interval is 1 minute instead of 2 minutes with PALMOS. PAWS and PALMOS run concurrently until 2017 (see below).

  • 2015 Oct 31

AWS1 (Wauwermans Islands) begins reporting

  • 2016 Feb 25

AWS2 (Joubin Islands) begins reporting

  • 2016 Apr 13

Start of snow stake measurements in the backyard (5 stakes). The average depth of the five stakes is now used for the snow stake “Accumulation" and the difference between the day before and the day of average is recorded as the New Snow.

  • 2016 Aug 01

AWS3 (Gamage Point) begins reporting. This AWS is a test platform installed on the old PALMOS Gamage Point tower. The instrumentation was later removed and reused for the new AWS3 in the Gossler Islands (see below).

  • 2016 Oct 12

Optical sensors (pyranometer and quantum PAR) installed on PAWS tower. Due to issues with sensor configuration, the pyranometer data clips at 1,085 W/m2 and the quantum data clips at 1,515 μmol/s/m2.

  • 2017 Oct 31

PALMOS ceases reporting. End of snow stake measurements on Gamage Point (single stake).

  • 2018 Jan

AWS3 removed from Gamage Point to be reinstalled in the Gossler Islands

  • 2019 Jan 08

AWS3 (Gossler Islands) begins reporting

  • 2019 Nov 20

Wind speeds and gusts had to be corrected between 2/28/2019 17:56 UTC - 11/20/2019 16:17 UTC due to the wrong propeller being installed on the BASE wind sensor. All files with "_fix" appended to them have been corrected. The correction coefficient that was applied was 0.588.

  • 2022 Jan 11

Quantum PAR data clipping resolved. Pyranometer clipping persists.