Surface Radiation Measurements at the Neumayer Ground Station (Antarctica)

The pyranometers and pyrgeometers are ventilated with slightly preheated air to minimize hoar frost problems and zero offsets during cloudless and windless conditions. The instruments were maintained continuously several times per day throughout the year. After one year of operation they are re-calibrated at the German Weather Bureau according the World Radiometric Reference (WRR).

At AWI, the radiation measurements - averaged over 10 & 5 minutes - are archived together with the data from the mast measurements, daily upper air soundings and routine synoptic surface observations in a relational database (SYBASE). Additionally some derived quantities (Iqbal 1983) such as the solar elevation, extraterrestrial solar insolation, astronomical sunshine duration are available. In order to obtain daily averaged radiation data, each day was subdivided into eight 3-hourly intervals (0-3, 3-6, ..., 21-24 UTC).

For each 3-hourly interval an average was derived irrespective of the number of measurements. This procedure was chosen in order to minimize problems resulting from missing values. If one or more 3-hourly averages were missing, no daily average was calculated.

Daily averaged radiation data are available from 13 March 1982 till 28 February 1994. They can be retrieved directly via World Wide Web: 'bremerhaven.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=13742'.