Our
good luck continues! The beautiful clear skies remained through the
night, giving the lidar team perfect conditions and over 4 hours of
ozone profile measurements. Daylight came as the day shift headed for
PEARL, where temperatures were much lower than yesterday (-27 C) and
the wind had come up (~17 knots, with stronger gusts). Looking out to
the South, you could see a thick band of haze, fog or blowing snow,
obscuring the horizon, but overhead the sky remained clear.
For the zenith-sky viewing UV-Vis instruments, this was perfect.
MAESTRO, SPS, SAOZ and the PEARL-GBS continue to work well. Mareile
spent the day learning about the SPS analysis with Tom, while Clive put
together the new sun-tracker that will be installed above the UT-GBS
later in the campaign. Cristen worked hard through the day, completing
the calibration of the UT-GBS, preparing the hatch ready for
installation, and beginning the calibration of the PEARL-GBS.
It was also a pretty good day for the FTS measurements. The sun rose at
10:45 am, and quickly lifted above the blowing snow and haze near the
horizon. While we did manage to catch the only clouds in the sky at
various points, they quickly passed and we succeeded in getting
measurements until nearly sunset (3:15 pm) - a total of 9, 10 and 27
measurements for the DA8, Bruker and PARIS respectively - before the
sun disappeared into the now much-thicker cloud/snow bank at the end of
the day. Just as we were finishing, Pierre came in and suggested it was
a good day to head back to the station early, as the cloud/snow bank
had now obscured Black Top. This is often the first sign of an
approaching storm, and having talked with Andy and Mike, we are pretty
keen to avoid the experience of being trapped at PEARL!
Back at the station, there was no wind. Mareile, Cristen, Bec, Rodica
and Oleg took the opportunity to check out the local skating rink
(which doubles as the station's water reservoir). The Sunrise Hockey
Season has now officially begun! The first game was declared a draw, 2
to 2, with Cristen, Mareile and Rodica holding firm against Oleg and
Bec.
Another exciting event for today was the lift off of our first campaign
ozonesonde. The large plastic Raven balloon was launched very
successfully by Bonnie and Jane, even though the wind had come up and
the balloon really blew around. As in previous years, the team
had bet on the maximum altitude that the balloon would reach. Clive
(using Annemarie's traditional bet of 2 x pi), won convincingly when
the balloon climbed to an unexpectedly high 6.8 hPa (34139 m). Felicia,
with the furtherest away bid, will be doing the dishes tomorrow!