The Danish Meteorological Institute, DMI, provides meteorological and related services for the community within the large geographical area of the Kingdom of Denmark (Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland), including surrounding waters and airspace. DMI’s area of activity comprises forecasting and warning services as well as continuous monitoring of weather, sea state, climate, and related environmental conditions in the atmosphere, over land and in the sea.
In the large network of observing stations DMI is running 5 manual sounding stations in Greenland. These stations are situated from latitude 61 to 77 N and thus all in the arctic region. Each station launches 2 radiosondes a day at 11 and 23 UTC. The lifting gas is hydrogen made locally on the station site by use of a hydrogen generator.
In order to replace the manual operated sounding equipment on one site in East Greenland (Tasiilaq) with automatic equipment (Automatic Balloon Launcher, ABL) in the autumn 2012, DMI intends to enter into contact with one supplier about delivery of the ABL including supplies of radiosondes for the ABL.
Installation of ABL in Tasiilaq is an experiment running for 3 years with the purpose of investigating if a satisfactory sounding regularity is achievable in a challenging climate with less use of manpower. If the conclusion of this experiment is positive, DMI might replace the remaining 4 stations with fully automatic launchers within a short number of years in a separate procurement.
The equipment shall be delivered for installation no later than 1. Oct 2012 to Tasiilaq.