The clouds have retreated...

Despite Richard M.'s prediction that we were going to get stormy weather, the day proved to be very good for solar measurements. The FTS tracker was able to track the Sun for almost 4.5 hours. The DA8 took 9 sets of observations which covered 4 filter bands and PARIS made 9 sets of solar measurements of 20 scans each.

Annemarie continues to make DOAS measurements with her automated system. The temperature control in the "dome" is still not as good as she would like and she is continuing to improve this.

The suntracker for the SPS and MAESTRO survived its night outside without any problems. Both instruments have been installed on the tracker and, after many fixes to frozen and broken cables, the whole system working on the roof. Hongjiang has written macros to operate the SPS automatically and is working on macros for MAESTRO. By tomorrow, both systems will be fully operational.

Charlene did her first fill of a Raven balloon tonight for the ozonesonde/radiosonde launch at 23:15 UTC. The launch went smoothly and Tobias, Ricahrd B., Keith and I watched the balloon undulate like a "jellyfish" as it rose into the air. The sonde reached an altitude of 7.7 mbar (31.6 km).

Today, we celebrated Richard M.'s birthday with wonderful chocolate sauerkraut cake provided by Joy, the Weather Station cook. There was a consensus among the ACE Arctic Validation team that it was very good of Richard to have his birthday occur during the campaign so we could help him eat his cake. There is even some left over for lunch tomorrow!

As for his weather predicting abilities, it appears that Richard M. is about as reliable as the Farmer's Almanac. Or is that the "Arctic Farmer's Almanac"...

Best regards,
Kaley.