Macquarie Island air temperature lapse rates and cloud cover, 2014-2016

Sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island provides an opportunity to compare lapse rates between windward and leeward slopes in a hyper-oceanic climate. Development of orographic cloud is expected to modify lapse rates, given the theoretical shift between dry and saturated adiabatic lapse rates that occurs with condensation of water vapour.

This dataset is part of a PhD project examining vegetation patterns and drivers on Macquarie Island. Data loggers were placed along an east-west altitudinal transect across the narrow axis of Macquarie Island to record air temperature from August 2014 to March 2016.A random sample of digital photographs from the AAD webcam at Macquarie Island Station was used to classify cloud base level as observed from the Station. This dataset includes air temperature data from LogTag loggers, analysis of near surface atmospheric lapse rates, observations of cloud cover from webcam images and relevant data supplied by Bureau of Meteorology used in analysis.