Antarctic atmospheric river catalogs based on MERRA-2 poleward integrated water vapor transport, 1980-2024

This dataset uses the MERRA-2 reanalysis (Gelaro et al. 2017) to detect Antarctic atmospheric rivers (ARs) from 1980 - 2024. The catalog is based on version 2.4 of the polar-specific AR detection tool developed by Wille et al. (2021), which uses the 98th percentile of poleward integrated water vapor transport and a 20-degree latitudinal extent as the threshold for ARs. The 98th percentile threshold is based on the 1991-2020 climatological period. Each file corresponds to one year of data, stored as three-dimensional arrays with time (3-hourly), latitude, and longitude coordinates, and a binary indicator for the presence of an AR at a given time and location. Gelaro, R., McCarty, W., Suárez, M. J., Todling, R., Molod, A., Takacs, L., et al. (2017). The modern-era retrospective analysis for research and applications, version 2 (MERRA-2). Journal of Climate, 30(14), 5419–5454. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0758.1 Wille, J.D., Favier, V., Gorodetskaya, I.V., Agosta, C., Kittel, C., Beeman, J.C., Jourdain, N.C., Lenaerts, J.T.M., Codron, F. (2021). Antarctic Atmospheric River Climatology and Precipitation Impacts. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 126(8), 2020–033788. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033788