Today
was a bit of a mixture for the ACE campaign team. In the good news
section, the PEARL-GBS seems to be running happily on Cristen's laptop,
and she has been making progress with its calibration tests. MAESTRO
and the SPS are also functioning, and Tom and Volodya have been
fine-tuning the tracking and operation programs. SAOZ, the UT-GBS and
the two Brewers are also behaving themselves. In the less-than ideal
news section, today bought clouds. In the FTS lab, early clouds low on
the horizon hampered measurements soon after sunrise (today at 10:30
am). These thinned out briefly before lunch, letting the tracker catch
the sun. The Bruker was able to record a couple of OK spectra during
this time, but the variable cloud was a bit much for PARIS. As we were
hoping for a continued improvement, a huge bank of cloud rolled in,
completely obscuring the sky. This was the end of FTS measurements for
the day, and also a complete stop for DIAL measurements through the
night.
All was not lost, however. The evening ozonesonde launched
successfully, and reached 8.5 hPa before burst. And with the night
shift grounded, we were able to take advantage of having all the team
(and also the CANDAC star photometer guys, Konstantin and Yann) at the
station at once to celebrate the successful start of the 2009 Canadian
Arctic ACE Validation Campaign.