Antarctic Composite Images

The Antarctic composite satellite image is a mosaic of geostationary and polar orbiting satellite data in the infrared window channel (approximately 11.0 microns) centered over the South Pole and covering much of the Southern Hemisphere. The Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC) has built these composites every three hours (0, 3, 6, etc. Universal Time Coordinated (UTC)) since 30 October 1992, and eventually hourly starting in 2009. The composite has a nominal resolution of 10 kilometers (as of 2014 4km) and the data is combined into a Polar Stereographic projection. The composites are made in 5 difference channels (infrared, water vapor, visible, shortwave, and longwave). The orientation of the composites is deliberately choosen in support of the United States Antarctic Program forecasting operations between New Zealand and Ross Island Antarctica. Thus, Grid North is not the orientation of the composites. The composite is generated at the AMRC offices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center and is distributed to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. It is also available on the Internet. Archived composites are available upon request to the AMRC at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/contact-form/index.php?name=AMRC. The data is available in the following data formats: McIDAS AREA, netCDF, ASCII or binary "flat" files and the following picture formats: GIF, JPG, PPM, BMP, JPG, PS, CPS (Others possible including TIF, etc.).