Antarctic Observations Get An Upgrade With SHIRE

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Published on 15 Oct 2025 | Hamish Prince

In collaboration with PREFIRE, the Southern Hemisphere polar Infrared Radiation Experiment (SHIRE) has begun an intensive observation campaign at Scott Base (78°S, 166°E) in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Funded primarily by Earth Sciences New Zealand (formally NIWA), SHIRE is a USA-DOE ARM small campaign (https://www.arm.gov/research/campaigns/osc2024SHIRE) coordinating an instrument deployment in the Antarctic region to provide necessary validation for PREFIRE while also facilitating numerous novel science questions. The observations focus on the deployment of an extended-range Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (ER-AERI; managed by UW-Madison SSEC; https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/aeri/) measuring the downwelling spectrally-resolved infrared radiation from the Antarctic atmosphere (between 3.3–25.0 µm). Paired with PREFIRE, these instruments will provide novel observations from both the surface and top-of-atmosphere allowing for total closure of the atmospheric emission spectra.

(left) ER-AERI deployed at Lauder, New Zealand in September 2025. (right) Location of ER-AERI deployment at Scott Base, Antarctica.

In addition to the ER-AERI, several other instruments are being utilized in McMurdo Sound to provide crucial supplemental information including a cloud height ceilometer, GNS-based water vapor observations, an all-sky imager, surface weather stations, regular radiosondes, and FTIR/UV remote sensing spectrometers. The full deployment of SHIRE at Scott Base begins in November 2025. These measurements will provide detailed observations on the role of water vapor, clouds, and absorbed heat on polar atmospheric thermal emissions at both the surface and top-of-atmosphere. Campaign scientists are particularly excited to use paired SHIRE and PREFIRE observations for robust validation of general circulation models in Antarctica, offering a novel attribution of model biases. Process-level science questions relating to weather will also be addressed examining the spectral radiative properties of variable synoptic conditions. Lastly, retrieved vertical profiles of temperature, water vapor, and cloud properties will also serve as crucial validation for the PREFIRE retrieval algorithms in this data-poor region. Other AERI deployments (previous and ongoing) will also be used to compare and contrast the changing and variable atmospheric spectral emission.

Example of downwelling atmospheric emission spectra in Lauder, New Zealand from the SHIRE deployed ER-AERI on a cold, clear-sky day (shown in gray). The range of the PREFIRE spectral channels are indicated with the red/blue coloring of the spectra. The blackbody emission at 4.8°C is shown as a dotted line.

SHIRE is a USA Department of Energy - Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Facility campaign funded by Earth Sciences New Zealand in collaboration with Antarctica New Zealand, NASA PREFIRE, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Canterbury.

PI: Dan Smale (Earth Sciences NZ)

Co-I: Sam Dean (Earth Sciences NZ), Hamish Prince (UW-Madison), Jonathan Gero (UW-Madison), Tristan L’Ecuyer (UW-Madison), and Adrian McDonald (U. Canterbury)

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