Hoping for another clear day...

As the Sun came up this morning, we found that there was more cloud on the horizon than yesterday morning. The night had been good for lidar measurements but the day was not looking as promising for solar observations. By mid-morning, the clouds were coming in thick towards the horizon and the Sun could not be tracked at all.

Richard B. has been taking lidar measurements overnight for five days now and is slowly getting used to his inverted sleeping schedule. The measurements are going well however he still seems to be overcome with tiredness at 2 am.

Clive had a successful day today. He found a way of rewiring a malfunctioning chip in the suntracker (using a additional set of inputs and outputs) and got it operating again. The tracker has been installed on the roof and under went some outdoor tests. It has been left outside overnight to see how it will function in the morning.

Annemarie made her first retrieval from the DOAS data collected yesterday. She found that the ozone total column was quite high and this agreed reasonably with the results from the ozonesonde flight on the evening of the 22nd. She is also happy to report that there is very little frost build-up on the "dome" window however the temperature still needs to be optimised.

This evening Andre and Charlene launched the second ozonesonde of the campaign with the synoptic radiosonde flight at 23:15 UTC. The winds were not too high so they were able to launch using a Raven balloon. The ozonesonde reached 8 mbar (~31 km).

We will have to see what is in store for tomorrow's weather. Richard M. has predicted that there is a storm coming. Going by his experience, in past years, there has typically been a storm on the 25th (or quite close to it). So what will happen this year...

Best regards,
Kaley.