Oh Sun, where did you go...
The day started early for the entire ACE Arctic team with the fire alarm going off at 5 AM. It appears that one of the sprinklers near the warehouse malfunctioned and flooded the gym with about 5 cm of water. If nothing else, it was a good reminder of the emergency procedures at the Weather Station.
When we awoke a little bit later, the skies were not so great. Michael had not gone up to the lab because there were thick layers of cloud above Eureka. He is trying to preserve the laser lifetime by not running the DIAL unnecessarily. It is a delicate balance to do this - running when the conditions are good without excluding the ok measurement opportunities.
By the time we got to the lab, the clouds cover had not improved. There was a good layer of cloud from 2 to 7 km (from the lidar measurements at 0PAL). There was a small region below this cloud bank where we saw the Sun. Unfortunately, it was hazy and impossible to use for direct sun measurements. Richard and Dejian took the opportunity to make HBr and N2O gas cell measurements with the DA8 and PARIS-IR. They reconfigured Dejian's calibration setup so that the same source could be used by both instruments.
Clive started archiving the SPS and MAESTRO data and got ready to start analyzing the data. Tom and Tobias now have the processing programs set up and are ready to go. The SAOZ automatic data transfer has been set up to send the data to France at midnight. Florence reported that she had received the data overnight and the instrument is performing well. Annemarie started the UT-GBS data analysis and we expect to have some preliminary results from at least two of the UV-VIS instruments in the next few days.
There was a herd of musk ox by the weather station when we returned from PEARL. The low light and the distance meant that most of our pictures require some imagination. You will have to see for yourselves once the website is up and running.
The first ozonesonde was scheduled for launch at 23:15 UTC. Unfortunately, there were communication problems between the ozonesonde / radiosonde and the computer which could not be fixed before the launch time. Luc will be looking into the problem and we will try again tomorrow night.
Best regards,
Kaley.