Meteorological Data from BGS Virkisjökull-Falljökull Glacier Observatory, 2009-2020

This dataset presents meteorological records from 3 weather stations around a glacier in southeast Iceland from 2009-2020. The weather stations were installed as part of British Geological Survey’s Glacier Observatory project, and were positioned at different altitudes close to the ice to record glacier weather. The data is in text format, and records key meteorological parameters including temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and solar irradiance. The weather stations were placed around Virkisjökull-Falljökull, an outlet glacier of the Öraefajökull ice cap in south east Iceland (AWS1 at 16°48'19"W, 63°57'53"N; AWS3 at 16°47'5"W, 63°58'13"N, and AWS4 at 16°48'7"W , 63°59'52"N). AWS1 was installed in September 2009, with AWS3 installed in September 2010, and AWS4 in September 2011. AWS3 and AWS4 were decommissioned in August 2018, and AWS1 in May 2020. AWS1 was located 100m from the current glacier margin at 156m a.s.l.; AWS3 sat 50m from the icefall at 444m a.s.l.; and AWS4 was situated on a clifftop overlooking the glacier at 858m a.s.l., close to the Equilibrium Line Altitude of the glacier. These were positioned at different altitudes to determine changes in weather parameters with height, thus producing for example, temperature or humidity gradients. The three stations were wirelessly linked, allowing data from the upper stations to be offloaded to the datalogger on the lower station. On-site downloads were completed using Campbell Scientific LoggerNet 4.x series software. AWS1 maintained mobile phone telemetry enabling automatic remote downloads of data from all stations on a daily basis, and remote access for software updates and health checks. Each AWS supported a slightly different sensor array, depending on the requirements of the site, and were mounted on 1.5m Campbell Scientific tripods. All of the stations were designed around a Campbell Scientific CR800 datalogger, and were solar powered, using combinations of PV panels up to 100W, supplying a Campbell Scientific 25Ah battery mounted on the tripod, plus a 110Ah gel cell battery back up in a separate housing. The data will be of use to researchers and students interested in the weather of southeast Iceland, glacier climate, local influence of glaciers on more regional synoptic weather systems, glacier climate modellers, glacier hydrologists and hydrogeologists. The BGS project was led and coordinated by Dr Jez Everest, technical support and implementation by Heiko Buxel and data Quality Assurance and checking by Dr Jon Mackay. Any periods where equipment malfunction, testing or replacement meant that no or unreliable data were collected are indicated by a ‘NAN’ value in the datasets.

Date (Creation): 2020-08-24

Citation identifier: http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13607659

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
University of Stirling	Dr Tom Bradwell	not available	Originator
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Originator
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Point of contact
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Originator

Maintenance and update frequency: Not planned

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Geology

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

Weather
data.gov.uk (non-INSPIRE)
Observatories
Meteorological stations
Meteorology

dataCentre

data.gov.uk (non-INSPIRE)

Keywords

NERC_DDC

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: licenceOGL

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Geographic identifier: ICELAND [id=903000]
British Geological Survey Gazetteer: Geographical hierarchy from Geosaurus 1979 creation

Geographic identifier: IS
ISO 3166_1 alpha-2 2009 revision

Geographic identifier: ISL
ISO 3166_1 alpha-3 2009 revision

Begin date: 2009-09-07

End date: 2020-05-18

Reference System Information

No information provided.

Distribution format

Name	Version
TXT files

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://www.bgs.ac.uk/services/ngdc/accessions/index.html#item137325	Data

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://doi.org/10.5285/72f0d514-365a-45c9-9d54-3cb0b9fc71fc	Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Other: dataset

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

Date (Publication): 2011

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF

Pass: No

Statement: The study operated three automated weather stations: AWS1 located 100m from the current glacier margin at 156m a.s.l. AWS3 50m from the icefall at 444m a.s.l. AWS4 situated on a clifftop overlooking the glacier at 858m a.s.l., close to the Equilibrium Line Altitude of the glacier.These were positioned at different altitudes to determine changes in weather parameters with height, thus producing eg, temperature or humidity gradients. All stations were wirelessly linked. On-site downloads were completed using Campbell Scientific LoggerNet 4.x series software. AWS1 maintained mobile phone telemetry enabling automatic remote downloads of data from all stations on a regular basis, and remote access for software updates and health checks. The stations were mounted on 1.5m Campbell Scientific tripods and used a Campbell Scientific CR800 datalogger. All AWS were solar powered.