It
was yet another glorious day in paradise! The night crew had managed
another full night of observing, and the sun dawned on another cloud
free morning. Jane launched an ozonesonde for the MATCH campaign with
the 11:15 UT balloon. It rose to 9.5 hPa (30956 m), providing another
useful comparison flight for the night-time DIAL measurements.
The day shift took a very much-deserved late start, joining the station
crew for an amazing brunch. By noon though, Clive, Cristen, Rodica,
Cristen, Oleg were at the lab and the instruments were all running,
while Mareile and Tom worked back at the station (so we only needed one
truck).
Things went pretty smoothly in the FTS lab, though the DA8 made it loud
and clear that it didn't like Sundays. Still, we managed to get 11 DA8
and 12 Bruker measurements, and 32 PARIS ones, with clear skies right
until the sun set behind the mountains at around 4:15 pm.
Things didn't go quite so smoothly for Cristen. Her new direct-sun
PEARL-GBS data is not looking as good as it should, and she spent much
of the day redoing lamp calibrations to determine the cause of the
problem. It seems likely that something is no longer quite in focus
after all the maneuvering required to get the tracker up and the
instrument reinstalled. Hopefully she'll get to the root of the
problem, and fix it, tomorrow. The other UV-Vis instruments,
however, continue to make good measurements, and graphs of MAESTRO and
SPS O3 and NO2 from Tom and Mareile are starting to appear.
A highlight of the day was our first wildlife sighting. On our way back
from the lab, Clive spotted some "mountain goats". The three
animals turned out to be Perry Caribou, a small whitish coloured
caribou that is rarely spotted around here. It was neat to see them
digging the snow away to expose the small plants below. It is amazing
how anything can survive the conditions up here. This year has
been unusual for the lack of wildlife around. Though we have seen the
odd bunny, there hasn't been a musk-ox or a fox to be seen.
The general consensus is that the 18 member wolf pack (much bigger than
in previous years) may well have eaten all the locals. The met-techs
are a little worried that they might be next on the menu!
Back at station, Tom, Mareile and Pierre headed out for a late
afternoon walk, capturing some nice views of the station from the
frozen fiord.
After dinner, our ozonesonde went off without a hitch, rising on a
Raven balloon to 7.2 hPa (32781m) and thankfully disproving my "no two
ozonesondes in a day" theory. Definitely a nice way to end a sunny
Sunday!