DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14918931
title: A Global Metadata Inventory of On-Glacier Weather Stations.

description: This metadata inventory provides the first, initial estimate of glaciers that have at some point in time or continue to be instrumented with an automatic weather station (AWS) on its surface. This inventory was created with the intention of understanding the work performed to date to explore glacier meteorology and understand glacier-climate interactions on varying spatial (locations of stations) and temporal scales. The inventory is an initial estimate based upon literature searches or personal experience and communication with scientists, research groups or data providers. This summary does not claim to be exhaustive or complete, and we fully expect that other glaciers have been monitored by AWS as part of published or unpublished research.... we just haven't found them yet. It is planned that we, along with community support, can expand this list and make it even more comprehensive and detailed regarding, for example, instrumentation, station siting and best practices. The value of this inventory could be in helping to identify regions that are under-represented in terms of AWS measurements or glacier types (e.g. debris-covered, valley, polar) that could benefit from longer, or more detailed types of measurements. By addressing major gaps in our current monitoring strategies, we can begin to explore means of standardising monitoring setups, generating new comparative experiments, or re-addressing current installations to explore new and pressing questions related to glacier-climate interactions. 

The V1 inventory is presented as a table, sub-set by regions of the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) with the following headers: NAME: The glacier name, as provided in the cited work.

RGI ID $: The ID number of the glacier given by the RGI v.6 dataset.

AWS LAT (DD)*: The latitude of the station for that glacier (in decimal degrees), or the average latitude of multiple stations if more than one station is given.

AWS LON (DD)*: The longitude of the station for that glacier (in decimal degrees), or the average longitude of multiple stations if more than one station is given.

AWS ELE (m a.s.l.)*: The elevation of the station in metres above sea level, or the mean of multiple stations. 

n AWS: The number of total AWS stations for a given glacier, which may be a range of values depending upon different studies monitoring the same glacier over successive years.

Max_AWS: The maximum number of stations that have been installed on the glacier in any known study.

Period (year(s))#: The year(s) or range of years that the glacier was monitored for.

Approx N. years: The approximate number of total years given by the ranges set out in the above variable. Short periods (weeks to several months) are considered to be 0.5.

Debris?: A logical value of whether the AWS observation was over debris (1 = yes). For glaciers hosting multiple AWS, a value of 1 is given if >50% of AWS were sited over debris.

Classification: A value of 1-4 is given, whereby 1= AWS is a simple temperature logger, or a temperature-relative humidity measurement only. 2 = AWS is a fully equiped energy balance weather station (including measurements of e.g. wind speed, radiation, pressure, temperature, humidity). 3= AWS is as 2, but also hosts a single-level eddy covariance instrument that measures high frequency energy and moisture fluxes at the near surface. 4 = AWS is a full boundary layer experiment that measures meteorology and fluxes at multiple heights and/or multiple locations and may also involve comparison of multi-method approaches to measure boundary layer meteorology (e.g. tethered balloons, radiosondes, UAVs etc). 

Citation ¢: A relevant citation(s) that describes the meteorological setup or analysis performed with the AWS. 

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$ While most regions have been considered, we focus primarily on glaciers in mountain environments, on ice caps or the outlets of Greenland. We do not consider the large networks of AWS for Greenland and Antarctica in the current inventory.

* Where precise coordinates were not provided by the available published material, approximate locations were interpreted from the published maps/figures using Google Earth.

# Where no end period of the AWS presence is specified, and no other literature source confirms it, it is assumed that the AWS is still operational. 

¢ The most relevant citation is provided based upon the available literature at the time of writing. It may be possible that some citations even more relevant to given items were overlooked or not available. 

 

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The attached files are 

i) AWS_Inventory_V1_README.txt: This same information in a readme text file.

ii) On-Glacier_AWS_Inventory_V1.xlsx: The inventory table in an Excel format.

iii) On-Glacier_AWS_Inventory_V1.pdf: The inventory table in a PDF format.

iv) On-Glacier_AWS_Inventory_V1_References.xlsx: The references provided for the table.

 

 

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We are keen to update this simple inventory with your help! Feel free to reach out with additions to this list, or with necessary corrections to the current version.