On the third cloudy day in a row...
Michael was able to get some sleep last night because the clouds were still covering the sky. He had quickly run out of things to do on night shift. He couldn't even watch the cloud layers since the 0PAL lidar was offline overnight due to a network problem.
The skies looked like they were clearing as we headed up to PEARL so there was optimism among the team members. We even had the opportunity to take more blurry pictures of the musk ox herd. They had moved up from the weather station to the valley just past Upper Paradise. Some how we managed to spook them with our cameras (or maybe it was the truck engine) and they quickly moved away from the road.
The cloud filled in as the Sun came up so there was little hope of making FTS measurements. Richard even tried a little "cloud clearing tai chi" up on the roof. But he had no luck pushing the clouds away. Work continued on data analysis. Richard, Dejian and I looked at the change in columns retrieved from the DA8 spectra using the whole solar beam and 2/3 of it. In general, the variation for most species is no different than the variability over one day. However, for NO and NO2, this picture is not so clear. We have devised a plan in which most of the day is spent sharing the beam between PARIS-IR and the DA8 and then, at midday, we will alternate between the two instruments for the NO and NO2 measurements. We are hoping that we get to test this plan soon!
Analysis continued in the UV-Vis lab. Tobias, Tom and Annemarie continued work on their respective data sets. Also, Clive worked with Tobias to brush up on the operation of SPS, MAESTRO and tracker. Pierre, Tom and Clive prepared MAESTRO and SPS to do a sighting of the Sun (whenever it appears). This will allow the instruments to follow Sun's motion and make direct solar measurements in addition to zenith sky.
After the wild temperatures yesterday, we were hoping for something more seasonable today. It was cooler: about -17 C at the station and -13 C at the lab. But it is not quite what we are used to at this time of year. As far as we can see, the warm midlatitude air that is sitting over the eastern Arctic does not seem to have made the news. We were thought that Environment Canada might have issued a press release but maybe we missed it.
There was some wind at the station this evening so the ozonesonde was launched using a Totex 1200 balloon. It basically disappeared into cloud after launch. The maximum altitude was 10.1 mbar (29.8 km) which meant that no one won. The lowest height guess was Tobias with 10.0 mbar. Maybe we will have better luck tomorrow.
Best regards,
Kaley.