CMDL South Pole Observatory

The South Pole Observatory was established at the geographical south pole at 2837 m above sea level in 1957 as part of the International Geophysical Year. The National Science Foundation provides the infrastructure for the NOAA/CMDL scientific operations including a state of the art science building named the Atmospheric Research Observatory opened in 1996. Two CMDL observatory staff spend one year tours of duty at the station which includes a 9 month period of isolation and six months of darkness. The South Pole Observatory (SPO) is one of four atmospheric baseline observatories for NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnositics Laboratory (CMDL). The Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO) was built by NSF in 1997 to house current atmospheric research and replaced NOAA's Clean Air Facility in operation from 1977 to 1997. Atmospheric data has been collected from South Pole since the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1957 - 1958.