The History of the Antarctic Automatic Weather Station: The Holy Grail of Antarctic Meteorological Observing

The history of automatic weather stations (AWS) in Antarctica actually spans back to the International Geophysical Year (IGY), as many attempts in the early years of the United States (US) Antarctic Program tried to succeed in having an autonomous weather station for remote observing. Many attempts were made by both the US Navy as well as other research universities and institutes In the late 1970's, efforts led by Stanford University paved the way to an AWS that would be able to make remote observations autonomously, year round, and transmit the observations to satellite for distribution and use, in near real time. This effort was eventually transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). Now nearly 34 years of observations have been made with this network. Several other nations have established their own networks in various sections of the Antarctic continent. This presentation will review the milestones along the way that gave rise to the modern day Antarctic AWS network from US efforts. The special role that the late Prof. Charles Stearns of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison played in fostering the network will be outlined. Glimpses of the future for the network will also be discussed.