Near surface climate of the traverse route from Zhongshan Station to Dome A, East Antarctica

• Published in: Antarctic Science
• Main Authors: Ma, Y, Bian, L, Xiao, C, Allison, I, Zhou, X
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Univ Press 2010
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Atmospheric Sciences; Climatology (excl. Climate Change Processes); Antarctic; East Antarctica; Zhongshan; Zhongshan Station; Antarc*; Antarctic Science; Antarctica; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102010000209; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/100640

Seasonal variation of temperature, pressure, snow accumulation, winds, and their harmonic analysis are presented by using the data from Zhongshan Station and three Automatic Weather Stations deployed between the East Antarctic coast and the summit of the ice sheet at Dome A for the period 200507. Results show that: 1) temperature, snow accumulation and specific humidity decrease with increasing elevation and distance from the coast, with snow accumulation decreasing from 199 mm water equivalent (w.e.) yr -1 at LGB69 (180 km from the coast) to 31 mm w.e. yr -1 at Dome A, 2) Dome A experiences an extremely low minimum temperature of -82.5C with the monthly mean temperature below -50C for eight months in contrast to Zhongshan Station which does not show any monthly mean temperatures below -20C, 3) mean surface wind speed increases from the coast to the escarpment region, and then reduces rapidly towards the interior plateau with the strongest winds occurring at katabatic sites with the greatest surface slopes, 4) temperature and pressure all shows a distinct biannual oscillation with a main minimum in spring and a secondary minimum in autumn, differing slightly from station to station, and 5) winter temperature corelessness increases as a function of elevation and distance from the coast, from 0.260 at the coastal Zhongshan Station to 0.433 at Dome A.