How much longer can this good weather last...

Michael had a great night of lidar measurements. It was very clear and there were lots of stars to be seen. He ran from 10:30 PM to 5:00 AM. He had to stop as twilight was beginning. The days becoming longer seems to be the biggest problem for the DIAL. Just as the FTS measurements are getting better, the lidar observations are waning.

Again, it was a day with low cloud and haze in the fjord and clear skies at the lab. It was -36 C at the lab and about -46 C at the station.

The FTSs took a full day of measurements through very thin cirrus cloud. I got to operate PARIS for most of the day. Keeyoon spent the morning at the station waiting for a Korean polar expedition to visit on their way to Ward Hunt Island. Their plan is to walk from Ward Hunt to the pole (~400 km) and they were to stop in Eureka to refuel. Unfortunately, when the plane landed Mike the MetTech and Keeyoon found that the Twin Otter contained a Japanese/Russian expedition rather than the Koreans! So instead of the face-to-face meeting, Mike made arrangements for Keeyoon to talk to the team members in Resolute. It was not quite what he had hoped for but it was still pretty good.

While the SPS and MAESTRO took their direct Sun and zenith sky measurements, SAOZ looked at the zenith through a frost-free dome. Annemarie and Clive rigged up a setup so that the DOAS could take direct Sun measurements for a few minutes and therefore have an alternate reference spectrum for the analysis.

Keith and Keeyoon spent some time this afternoon getting the track truck operating so it could be used for a trip to an iceberg trapped in the fjord. It would also be useful to know that it is working well if we had to evacuate the lab for any reason! Everything was going smoothly until they tried to use the fuel pump to fill the diesel tank. It appears that the 12 V pump does not work any longer and it would be a good idea to ensure that we had a hand pump here at the lab as a backup.

Again today, we tried to synchronize the daily ozonesonde with an ACE overpass. The Raven balloon was launched at 20:00 UTC and took the sonde to 6.7 mbar. Jennifer came closest with a guess of 7.0 mbar. The ACE occultation measurement occurred within about 50 km of AStrO/PEARL.

We heard that Jim, Tom, Heather and the journalists got to enjoy an overnight in Iqaluit. It turned out that their plane was able to make it from Resolute Bay to Nanisivik to Iqaluit but could not make it any further because of a blizzard in Iqaluit. They got out on Sunday and back to their homes a little later than they had hoped. It seems like our team is having rather bad luck in getting home. I wonder if anyone will get home on schedule?

Best regards,
Kaley.