It
was a gorgeous morning this morning. The sky was bright red near the
horizon, with the few low-lying clouds lit up in florescent colours as
we walked out of the building. The -45 degree temperatures at the
station turned to -26 degrees at the lab, and the last few clouds
melted away just after the sun came up, giving perfect observing
conditions.
The lidar team had had a very successful night, with the measurements
from around 10.30 - 4 am. The extra ozonesonde they requested was
released with the 11:15 UT radiosonde without a hiccup, giving
beautiful data to 5 hPa. I managed to catch up with Andy, who had
helped with the balloon launch, before breakfast and finally got a few
night shift photographs for the photo journal. Unfortunately Mike,
Bernard and Andy have been a bit under-represented in there so far!
Up in the FTS lab, Felicia, Rodica and I enjoyed the best sunshine we'd
had so far this campaign. We managed a record 17 Bruker and DA8
measurements and 48 PARIS measurements from when the sun peeked above
the mountains until it set back into them. Day after day of great
measurements is certainly unusual for this time of year, and we're
enjoying it while we've got it!
The PEARL-GBS also had its first day of direct sun measurements. After
Cristen, Mareile and Clive spent a couple of hours getting the tracker
operational, aligned and turning freely within the dome, the GBS was
set up in a temporary location below it. The tracker managed to
successfully track the sun through the afternoon (though the Brewer and
the railing were problematic with the low sun here at this time of
year!) and Cristen was very excited to have some good-looking spectra
before the day was out. They left the tracker looking straight up at
the end of the day, thus allowing the PEARL-GBS to measure in
zenith-sky mode through twilight and for tomorrow morning.
Back at the station and after dinner, things didn't go quite so
smoothly for the evening ozonesonde launch. It seems there may be an
unknown-to-me law against having two successful ozonesonde launches in
one day! The balloon appeared to have a hole in it, as it never rose
sufficiently well for the tracking software to recognize it had been
launched, and there was no data at all. Bad luck! Do we declare
Rodica's 8.8 hPa (our closest bid) the winner?