15 Comments

Did you uncover any info on what thermometer technology is in use? I looked at some scientific equipment sites and some of their expensive low temperature kit had + or - 1 or 2 degrees accuracy. They must be using something better than that surely?

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Nothing as yet but I'm up against it on the time front!

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https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press/single-view/meteorological-observatory-becomes-climate-observation-station-30-years-of-temperature-measurements-at-neumayer-antarctic-research-station.html has some info - “It consists of a temperature-sensitive platinum wire protected against solar radiation. It is installed on the observatory tower at a height of two metres, ambient air is swirled around it at every measurement and the data are read out by a computer. “We regularly check the stability of this measuring system by means of reference thermometers,” explains Gert König-Langlo.”

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Good man! A start and it's stuck on the top of a building within the base complex as I had anticipated. The swirling is ambiguous and sounds like they resort to mechanical means. Shame they didn't offer detail on those reference thermometers but I'm betting they're not stuck out on the ice a good few hundred metres away!

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That station also doesn’t show any warming - there is a cooling trend over 30 years. Hope that agrees with your data! They say their telemetry is updated and broadcast every three hours.

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Excellent! The thing with these bases is that they're swimming in data but getting hold of it as a member of the public in a user-friendly format isn't that easy, hence my reliance on KNMI's climate explorer which takes the strain out of data retrieval and prep.

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