The
last night of DIAL measurements was another good one. Though there was
a little low cloud left over from our day, the lidar was able to easily
pass through it to get a few good hours of measuring. It was an early
finish for them though, and they appeared to be pretty awake when they
arrived back in the lab in the early afternoon to begin packing up and
shutting their instrument down for the season. This has been an amazing
year for them, with measurements nearly every night for the whole 3
weeks of their campaign.
For the rest of us, the last of the clouds hung around until daybreak
(now about 9 am), and magically cleared right as the sun came up. This
was perfect timing for the FTS instruments, and we managed an
impressive 20 measurements with each of the DA8 and Bruker, and 60 with
PARIS. All three instruments behaved beautifully through out the day,
and we measured right until the sun set behind the mountains at 4:30 pm.
It was also a good day for the UV-Vis instruments, which were all
working as they should. Good progress was made on data analysis, and
there was even some time for a little tobogganing behind the lab.
The evening ozonesonde launch went off without a hitch and rose to 6.0
hPa (33695 m). We were joined in cheering the Raven balloon off by a
few of the DIAL and Dalhousie lidar nightshift crew members, all of who
are now returning to dayshift in preparation for their plane (due to
arrive here tomorrow and fly out on Thursday).
As you can imagine, with everyone on the same sleeping schedule, there
was a bit of socializing into the evening. The table tennis, pool and
shuffle board tables saw some action, and there was even a round of the
uniquely Arctic game of sublimation baseball. For those of you
who have never had the opportunity to experience -45 degree
temperatures, you may not realize that small droplets of water thrown
outside (from person-height) are able to completely sublimate before
hitting the ground. Sublimation baseball requires no running or
bases... just a balloon filled with water, a baseball bat, lots of
laughter and a big cloud of steam!