The Making of a Sea Ice Temperature Graph
The signal from the temperature probe is fed into a Campbell Scientific data logger which is housed inside of a plastic box which sits on legs on the surface of the sea ice. A computer program running on the data logger controls how often the temperatures are recorded. A radio located next to the data logger inside the box then sends the temperature signal to a computer in the Longterm Science Building at Scott Base via a base station radio installed at the top of Crater Hill.
Once the data has arrived at the University of Otago, it is automatically processed to generate the tables and graphs shown here. This is accomplished using a combination of computer server script files and the Python scripting language.