Compiling, normalizing and quality checking a pan-Arctic dataset og in situ weather observations from 1990-2023 collected from publicly available data sources

Research into the effects of changing Arctic climate has been limited by large-scale in situ data availability because of the remoteness and harsh climate of the Arctic. Only recently, therefore, are hourly-to daily measurements covering most Arctic regions publicly available, but scattered in various local databases.

In this project, we obtained in situ weather data from all major Arctic regions from publicly available data sources across the Arctic with focus on the period 1990-2023. The data set, which contains 719 unique locations from 14 data sources and covers all Arctic regions, has been restructured and -formatted into a standardized data format, combined with metadata about location and elevation. It was further quality checked by running it through five optional modules of increasingly user-involved judgement-based checks. We supply the code involved in import and standardization, and the modular quality check, as well as the standardized, but unchecked data set, and the final, quality checked, data set.

The data set has the potential to benefit pan-Arctic in situ research opportunities as e.g. validation and ground truthing of modelling efforts.