Yet
another picture perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky all night or all
day. I know there are some people reading this who have been involved
in these campaigns since the beginning.... does anyone remember ever
having 9 straight days of perfect conditions around sunrise? We have
already managed more good FTS (and DIAL) measurements than were
obtained in the entire intensive phase last year - not that any of us
are complaining!
As you can imagine, it was a great measuring day. The DIAL ran all
night, and the FTSs made measurements from sun up to sun down. The
Bruker and DA8 each clocked in with 17 measurements, and PARIS made an
almighty 50. In the UV-Vis world, MAESTRO, SPS, the UT-GBS and
SAOZ continued to work nicely, and the PEARL-GBS got both zenith sky
(morning and evening) and direct sun (during the day) measurements. The
new GBS tracker is working really well, succeeding in tracking the sun
without a hiccup throughout the sunlit part of the day. Data
analysis is also going well, with Mareile and Tom working on optimizing
the processing of the SPS data, Cristen looking at the GBS data, and
the FTS team moving towards getting some trace gas retrievals done
while we're still in the field.
Our ozonesonde also launched without a hitch tonight, with the Totex
balloon reaching 7.8 hPa (32248 m). By the time it burst, the
day-shift, the Dalhousie team and all the station staff were involved
in a hilarious game of bingo. Somehow, the two-person Dalhousie team
managed to win 8 out of 10 rounds... and the other two went to station
staff. Oh well, with all this good weather, I guess our luck
couldn't stretch too much further! In typical Eureka style, bingo
made way for dancing, and a great night was had by all.