Meteorologists keep eye on Antarctic weather – by remote control

Matthew Lazzara isn’t like most meteorologists. His forecasts never include “hot and dry” or “rain likely.” But before you think he’s describing your next vacation spot, know that his forecasts also include, “Low near minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit” and “Winds up to 120 miles per hour.”

Lazzara forecasts for one of the planet’s nastiest climates — Antarctica. Headquartered at a much warmer locale in Wisconsin, Lazzara oversees dozens of Antarctic weather stations immune to freezer-like conditions to gather his data. He then shares this information with other Antarctic researchers, so they can avoid frost bite, hypothermia and getting lost in blinding snowstorms.

Lazzara, an atmospheric scientist, is part of a team of university researchers working on the Automatic Weather Stations project, which was started in 1980 by Antarctica pioneer Charles Stearns and is funded by the National Science Foundation’s polar research program. Each year, this group builds and repairs 10-foot- tall weather stations equipped to record temperature, humidity, air pressure, and wind speed and direction. From start to finish, each station costs $15,000.

The stations can bear the brunt of Antarctic weather. Down under, temperatures can reach the world record for the coldest — minus 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit — and hurricane-force gusts can be clocked up to 200 miles per hour. To stand stoic against these harsh conditions, the weather stations’ control centers are specially designed. Enclosed in a metal box, “the electrical components can withstand temperatures around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit,” says the project’s co-principal investigator George Weidner. Pointing to a drawer-like container built into a workbench, he says, “I test them out in this cooling chamber that can store dry ice.”

That’s not to say stations don’t take a beating — high winds can blast off parts and even paint.

Weidner tweaks some stations for specific locations. Those mounted onto the frozen water of an iceberg or ice sheet, for example, include a global positioning device to track their migration with the ice. “The stations do move, because you’re putting them into ice,” says Lazzara, who notes that the official location of the South Pole seems to slide because the ice sheet covering it slides about.

Of more than 50 UW–Madison weather stations scattered throughout the Antarctic, about 70 percent have been installed and serviced (or, more likely, uncovered from snow) by the Madison team. Others have been built for research programs based at British, French, German and Japanese sites. “We have so many stations and so few people who can get to them,” says Lazzara. “We share service responsibilities with those who can.”

More importantly, they also share data. “The Antarctic experience involves an awful lot of collaboration between nations that you typically don’t see,” he says. After processing the temperature readings and barometric levels gathered by the stations, Lazzara passes it on to international weather labs and researchers. “We’ve been funded to get this data and give it away.”

Scientists use the information to forecast weather both now and in the distant future. “If you’re on a plane heading towards Antarctica, you want to know about the weather,” says Weidner, who’s traveled to the frosty continent 14 times. For this reason, many of the weather stations are located where researchers land, either by ship or plane. “You want to be able to fly scientists to where they can do their research,” says Lazzara, who once boarded a plane three times before he actually landed at McMurdo Station.

The real-time data used to forecast also can be used to develop accurate forecasting models. Lazzara explains, “For getting forecasting right, you really need observations.” Computer modelers plug these observations into equations and design programs to predict other climate changes, such as global warming. In many cases, the data lets modelers check the accuracy of their forecasts.

And by putting the day-to-day data into a timeline, Weidner and his colleagues have shown that El Nino — a weather pattern leaving the tropics warmer and wetter than usual — also affects Antarctica.

Weidner concludes: “It’s a challenge to do science down there. Everything takes three times longer. And, when the weather’s good, you work — sometimes 24 hours straight.”