The cloud clears away from the Sun...
When he returned this morning, Michael reported that the skies were clear up at lab. He had some reasonable measurements but there were layers of ice crystals or very thin cloud that kept moving in and out. He also had encountered the musk ox herd on the way back. They were now much closer to the road.
As the Sun came up, there was some cloud and haze on the horizon. The bands of cirrus cloud tended to be higher than the Sun's maximum elevation so the observing conditions were fairly good. Richard, Dejian and I continued the simultaneous measurement tests with PARIS-IR and the DA8. The signal-to-noise ratio calculations from these spectra will be completed today.
UT-GBS and SAOZ continued their measurements in their domes. The wind speed was lower today than it had been yesterday so the domes were a bit warmer. I will be watching the SAOZ temperatures to see if we need to increase the air circulation in the dome. So far, the dome windows have had minimal frost and we hope that it stays this way! Annemarie has calculated slant column amounts for ozone for both instruments and the comparisons look good.
The SPS and MAESTRO tracker program decided not to work today. Tom and Clive spent the afternoon trying to figure out what was happening. It seemed to be able to track the Sun but had a problem shifting between zenith sky and direct sun measurement modes. This is very frustrating because the tracker has been working for the last week. Tobias started to process some of the SPS data taken earlier in the week.
On the way up to PEARL, attempts were made to photograph the musk ox herd again. This time they were closer but the low light seemed to be the impediment. When Oleg and Pierre came back to the lab to pick us up, they reported that the musk ox were even closer to the road. A group of dedicated photographers (whose experiments were automated or over for the day) piled into the truck to head down to the weather station. By the time they got there, the musk ox had moved off away from the road and nearly out of sight. Maybe these naturally camera shy animals were finally fed up with the annoying scientists and their paparazzi ways.
The ozonesonde measurements finally started tonight after dinner. With some input from a colleague in Alert, Luc was able to fix the computer issue that prevented last night's launch. The Raven balloon carrying the ozonesonde got to 7.5 mbar (31.6 km). Paul's guess of 7.0 mbar came closest (without going over).
Best regards,
Kaley.