Floating Platforms
The data in this section of the Atlas are from floating platforms: ships, manned drifting stations, and unmanned drifting stations. These data, taken together, provide observations with better spatial and temporal coverage of the Arctic ocean than has generally been available in the past. These data are three or six hourly synoptic data, monthly means, or in the case of Drifting Automatic Radiometeorological Stations (DARMS), once daily observations. Data are from:
Russian "North Pole" drifting stations: Two-meter air temperature, sea level pressure, total and low cloud, surface temperature, and wind velocity, for years spanning 1938 to 1991.
Western drifting stations: The earliest data are from the Fram in 1893, and the latest are from the AIDJEX experiment in 1975 and 1976. Parameters vary but all stations include air temperature, pressure, wind, and humidity data. (We use the term "western" loosely to distinguish the Russian from the non-Russian stations.)
DARMS (Drifting Automatic Radiometeorological Stations): Wind, pressure and temperature data from 1958 through 1975 from the Russian program.
Ice patrol ships: Wind, pressure, air temperature, sea surface temperature, total cloud amount, low cloud amount, and relative humidity for voyages of Russian ships from 1952 through 1982.
To view the time coverage for any parameter from any station, and to see a plot of the individual station track, use the Atlas HTML interface. (These options are not available for DARMS data due to the large number of stations). The data are in uniformat files.