Design and Installation Of The Fog Prediction System In The Antarctic

Coastal Environmental Systems designed, built and installed 10 weather stations to be used for fog prediction near McMurdo station in the Antarctic. The weather station design had to account for some very unusual requirements:

* The station had to operate down to minus 50 degrees centigrade (this included the standard meteorological suite PLUS a visibility sensor and a ceilometer

* The stations had to operate on SOLAR POWER ONLY

* The stations are to be left out over winter – and auto-restart in the Antarctic Spring

* The stations must be configured in a radio network for real time data retrieval

The ZENO® 3200 data acquisition system was used to meet these unique requirements because it could survive these extremes, operate on very low power and most importantly – it could, on command from the base station, activate the power hungry visibility sensor and ceilometer. Without this ability the system would have required a diesel generator (a very environment unfriendly and costly approach).

Both the design and subsequent installation of this system required overcoming many unique challenges that should have important implications in other systems – even in routine environments