The historical Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) curated and augmented Level 1 dataset

• Main Authors: Vandecrux, Baptiste, Box, Jason E., Ahlstrøm, Andreas P., Andersen, Signe B., Bayou, Nicolas, Colgan, William T., Cullen, Nicolas J., Fausto, Robert S., Haas-Artho, Dominik, Heilig, Achim, Houtz, Derek A., How, Penelope, Iosifescu Enescu, Ionut, Karlsson, Nanna B., Kurup Buchholz, Rebecca, Mankoff, Kenneth D., McGrath, Daniel, Molotch, Noah P., Perren, Bianca, Revheim, Maiken K., Rutishauser, Anja, Sampson, Kevin, Schneebeli, Martin, Starkweather, Sandy, Steffen, Simon, Weber, Jeff, Wright, Patrick J., Zwally, H. Jay, Steffen, Konrad
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelf
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-147; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-147/

The Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) consists of 31 automatic weather stations (AWS) at 30 sites across the Greenland ice sheet. The first site was initiated in 1990, and the project has operated almost continuously since 1995 under the leadership of the late Prof. Konrad Steffen. The GC-Net AWS measured air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, atmospheric pressure, downward and reflected shortwave irradiance, net radiation, ice and firn temperatures. The majority of the GC-Net sites were located in the ice sheet accumulation area (17 AWS), while 11 AWS were located in the ablation area and two sites (three AWS) were located close to the equilibrium line altitude. Additionally, three AWS of similar design to the GC-Net AWS were installed by Prof. K. Steffen’s team on the Larsen C ice shelf, Antarctica. After more than three decades of operation, the GC-Net AWS are being decommissioned and replaced by new AWS operated by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Therefore, making a reassessment of the historical GC-Net AWS data is necessary. We present a full reprocessing of the historical GC-Net AWS dataset with increased attention to the filtering of erroneous measurements, data correction, and derivation of additional variables: continuous surface height, instrument heights, surface albedo, turbulent heat fluxes, 10 m ice and firn temperatures. This new augmented GC-Net Level 1 (L1) AWS dataset is now available at https://doi.org/10.22008/FK2/VVXGUT (Steffen et al. 2022) and will continue to be refined. The processing scripts, latest data and a data-user forum are available at https://github.com/GEUS-Glaciology-and-Climate/GC-Net-level-1-data-processing . In addition to the AWS data, a comprehensive compilation of valuable metadata is provided: maintenance reports, yearly pictures of the stations and the station positions through time. This unique dataset provides more than 320 station-years of high quality atmospheric data and is available following FAIR data and code practices.