International Programme for Antarctic Buoys (IPAB)
Fairly complete coverage of the study area - south of 55 degrees South latitude, and includes that region of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic marginal seas within the maximum seasonal sea-ice extent. There is some bias in terms of time coverage towards the early to mid months of the year (eg. March...
| Summary: | Fairly complete coverage of the study area - south of 55 degrees South latitude, and includes that region of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic marginal seas within the maximum seasonal sea-ice extent. There is some bias in terms of time coverage towards the early to mid months of the year (eg. March to August). During 1995, there were a total of 19 buoys operating in Antarctic sea ice, and reporting via the GTS, plus an additional 11 buoys deployed which provided data to the IPAB database, but not to the GTS. During 1996, a total of 21 drifting buoys operated, with all but 3 of these reporting via the GTS. During 1997, 11 new buoys were deployed, with information being reported from 20 buoys. Problems with the positioning system and northward drift out of the sea-ice zone reduced the amount of information collected. Please see the URL link for further information. The International Programme for Antarctic Buoys (IPAB) is run by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). IPAB is a self-sustaining project of the WCRP, and provides a link between institutions with Antarctic and Southern Ocean interests. IPAB was formally established, following a one year pilot phase, at a meeting in Helsinki, Finland in June 1994. IPAB aims to establish and maintain a network of drifting buoys in the Antarctic sea-ice zone, which monitor ice motion, pressure and temperature. In 1997, 16 organisations, representing 11 countries, were involved in the IPAB programme, including: Alfred Wegener Institute, Antarctic CRC, Australian Antarctic Division, British Antarctic Survey, Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, INPE -National Institute for Space Research, Institute for Marine Research and University of Helsinki, Hydrographic Department, Maritime Safety Agency, National Ice Center, National Institute of Polar Research, Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antardtide, Scott Polar Research Institute, Service Argos, South African Weather Bureau, United Kingdom Meteorological Office, and World Data Center A Glaciology. Tables of data availability, information, experiment details, literature, and data sets are available from the IPAB home page. Links are also available to databases held by other organisations, and links to Arctic and Indian Ocean buoy databases. The data are available via several provided URLs. Further information and the data can be obtained from the IPAB home page URL. The data and documentation are also available directly from the NSIDC website. Finally, an older copy of the data are also held locally on the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's servers. The documentation held at the NSIDC website provides important information on interpreting the dataset. A static copy of this document is included with the local copy of the dataset held on the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's servers. Data from January 1995 to July 1998 only has been made available on the NSIDC website (and correspondingly on the AADC's servers). More data should be available soon. This work was also completed as part of ASAC projects 732, 742 and 2678. The fields in this dataset are: Buoy Number Year Time Longitude Latitude ARGOS Positional Accuracy Sea Ice Flag Air Pressure Air Temperature Water Temperature Velocity |
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