A Dozen Years of Temperature Observations at the Summit: Central Greenland Automatic Weather Stations 1987–99

Abstract

On 4 May 1987, the first automatic weather station (AWS) near the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet began transmitting data. Air temperature records from this site, AWS Cathy, as well as nearby AWS at the Greenland Ice Sheet Project II (GISP2, now Summit) camp have been combined with Special Sensor Microwave Imager brightness temperature data to create a composite temperature history of the Greenland summit. This decadal-plus-length (4536 days) record covers the period from May 1987 to October 1999 and continues currently. The record is derived primarily from near-surface temperature data from AWS Cathy (May 1987?May 1989), AWS GISP2 (June 1989?November 1996), and AWS Summit (May 1996 and continuing). Despite the 35-km distance between them, the AWS Cathy data have been converted to the equivalent basis of temperatures from the AWS GISP2 and AWS Summit locations. The now completed ?Summit? temperature time series represents a unique record that documents a multiyear temperature recovery after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991 and that initiates a baseline needed for climate change detection.