SNOW-WEB: a new technology for Antarctic meteorological monitoring

This study describes SNOW-WEB, a distributed system of atmospheric sensors, which is costeffective and can be efficiently deployed in Antarctica. The system supports traditional atmospheric sensors and has built-in redundancy as many units can be deployed in a relatively small area for a similar cost to one conventional weather station. Furthermore, each unit is equipped with wireless mesh-networking capabilities and so is able to share information with those units in its direct vicinity. This allows for the ferrying of collected information to a manned observation station and hence the ability to monitor data in real-time. GPS hardware installed on each unit also allows for high-resolution glacier or ice shelf tracking. As a testing study, eighteen such weather stations were deployed in the vicinity of Scott Base, Ross Island, Antarctica over the 2011/12 summer season. This paper reports on the successful development and deployment of the system, results from the testing period and challenges encountered during the experiment. Collected data is validated against automatic weather stations already operating in the region and an intercomparison is performed between SNOW-WEB data and forecast output from the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System. A high degree of agreement is found between data sources. We conclude that SNOW-WEB data is suitable for use in studies of mesoscale meteorology. Received 30 July 2012, accepted 6 November 2012, first published online 22 February 2013