{"id":11129,"date":"2018-07-19T14:48:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=11129"},"modified":"2019-03-05T17:15:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T17:15:53","slug":"worlds-antarctic-experts-gather-in-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/11129","title":{"rendered":"World’s Antarctic experts gather in Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers from around the world convened mid-July in Madison, WI to attend the 13th<\/sup> Annual Workshop on Antarctic Meteorology and Climate and Year of Polar Prediction-Southern Hemisphere, hosted by the UW-Madison Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC). The three-day conference brings together the Antarctic research community including forecasters, atmospheric scientists, pilots, archivists and others who work to better understand the southernmost continent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal each year is to share information about everything Antarctica,\u201d says Matthew Lazzara, AMRC director. \u201cBy bringing together experts in atmospheric science, weather prediction, and modeling, we\u2019re planning for this year\u2019s Antarctic research season with a push to improve polar weather predictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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More than 55 attendees gathered in Madison, Wisconsin for the 13th annual Workshop on Antarctic Meteorology and Climate. Credit: Eric Verbeten<\/p><\/div>\n

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Matthew Lazzara, director of the UW-Madison Antarctic Meteorological Research Center, on site at Minna Bluff Automatic Weather Station February 2018. Credit: Ryan Morse<\/p><\/div>\n

Antarctic research is largely an international collaboration, with more than a thousand scientists and support staff making the journey to the continent each year during Antarctica\u2019s summer months. Among the scientists making the annual trek are members of Lazzara\u2019s team who perform maintenance on more than 57 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) clustered in the westernmost part of Antarctica. Owned by the UW, they\u2019re engineered and designed to withstand the Antarctic climate of extremes. The AWS systems, with rare exceptions, continuously collect atmospheric measurements, including temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind direction.<\/p>\n

These weather data, along with station data collected by international partners, are being used to build a more robust climate record for the various regions of the continent. Twice the size of Australia, Antarctica is comprised of different regions which can experience drastically different weather conditions due to changes in elevation, atmospheric currents, and proximity to the oceans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntarctica behaves like a giant thermostat for the planet\u201d says Lazzara. \u201cIt plays a major role in the Earth\u2019s climate and any changes there can affect the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A team of researchers recently identified the coldest place on Earth<\/a>, nearly -146\u00b0 Fahrenheit, by analyzing thermal measurements from NASA\u2019s Landsat 8 and Aqua polar orbiting satellites from 2004-2016. The low temperatures occurred in a region near the East Antarctic ice divide, where readings can frequently dip below -140\u00b0 Fahrenheit during the winter months (May-September). Lazzara, who was a co-author on the paper, says this temperature extreme is likely as cold as the planet can get.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for those temperatures to occur, the conditions have to be just right, and they have to stay that way for an extended period of time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt happens during periods of very low humidity, clear skies, and little to no wind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazzara notes the distinction between temperature measurements taken from satellite radiances compared to those gathered by instruments on the ground. The record setting -146\u00b0 Fahrenheit was recorded from the Landsat 8 data based on the infrared skin temperatures \u2013 the surface temperature differentiated from the temperature of the atmosphere \u2013 which differ from many previous records taken in situ<\/em> with thermometers resting between two to three meters above the surface.<\/p>\n

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The area of the WMO Antarctic Region (all lands and ice south of 60\u00b0S) delineating the 2500 meter elevation and showing locations of Signy, Esperanza and D-80, the three high temperature extreme stations. Credit: School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University.<\/p><\/div>\n

At the other extreme, Lazzara and his team also supported research to identify the highest temperatures<\/a> for various regions of the continent. In a paper published in early 2017, the team sorted through years of climate data and verified a record high of 67.6\u00b0 Fahrenheit located at Signy Island in 1982. For record keeping, the Antarctic is divided into regions based on latitude, beginning with locations south of 60\u00b0 latitude where the Signy Island measurement was recorded. Farther inland, near the Ad\u00e9lie Coast, AMRC\u2019s automatic weather station D-80 registered a record high of 19.4\u00b0 Fahrenheit in December 1989.<\/p>\n

Now, with observational data extending back from 1957, scientists are amassing enough information to begin to tease apart the clues to Antarctic and global climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning about Antarctic temperature extremes is in part curiosity,\u201d says Lazzara. \u201cbut more importantly it helps us better understand what conditions make the area so extreme, and also how it\u2019s changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Madison Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
\nCover image credit: Jonathan Gero<\/em><\/p>\n

By Eric Verbeten<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers from around the world convened in summer 2018 in Madison, WI to attend the 13th Annual Workshop on Antarctic Meteorology and Climate and Year of Polar Prediction-Southern Hemisphere, hosted by the UW-Madison Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":11132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-11129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-cimss"],"acf":{"ssec_home_page_carousel_image":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2018\/07\/Antarctica_Web_Banner.jpg","short_title":"World\u2019s Antarctic experts gather in Madison","sub_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11129"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11770,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129\/revisions\/11770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}