Abstract:
Surface meteorological data are provided from a network of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at 20 sites in remote regions of East Antarctica, and one at sub-Antarctic Heard Island. These stations are deployed and operated by the Australian Antarctic Division Glaciology Program. The first station was deployed in 1982 and the network has continued to expand since then.
All stations
... use the ARGOS data relay system, carried by the NOAA series of near-polar orbiting satellites to relay data. Three-hourly synoptic data from most AWS are distributed in near real time directly by Service Argos via the World Meteorological Organisation, Global Telecommunication System. The data set described here contains the climatic record of all observations from the stations. It is not a real-time data set.
All stations measure air temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction. Most measure air temperature and wind speed at more than one height, providing data on near-surface vertical gradients, a check on the data accuracy, and some instrumental redundancy. Some stations have additional sensors measuring snow temperature at different depths, atmospheric humidity, solar radiation and height of the sensors above the snow surface (which changes due to snow accumulation and ablation) as well as several 'house-keeping' parameters (voltage, internal temperature, etc.).
A summary of the available data in the form of annual plots of air temperature, wind speed and pressure, and monthly averages of all variables is available at the related URL shown below. The full data set for any AWS site is downloadable in netCDF format from that link, and software is available to select specific sensors or periods. The data are made freely available, but acknowledgment should be made to the Australian Antarctic Division Glaciology Program as the original source. 
