We have
sad news to report today. The DIAL (ozone lidar) at PEARL finally died
last night. It has served EC well since PEARL was first started as the
Arctic Stratospheric Ozone (AStrO) Observatory in the early 1990s, and
has been a great member of the ACE Validation campaigns for the last
few years.
Its death by old age was not unexpected, and its successor is already
in the planning, but we are thankful that it chose to survive through a
record 17 nights of high-quality measurements this campaign before
dying as the sun was getting too high for great measurements anyway.
Emily and Bernard are obviously very disappointed that it stopped
before the end of the campaign, and did their best to revive it, but to
no avail. RIP DIAL!
Fortunately, news was a little better in the UV-Vis lab, where SAOZ,
MAESTRO and the SPS continue to work beautifully and the PEARL-GBS
continued to make measurements for the second day in a row *touch
wood*. Cristen ran both GBSs in O3/NO2 configuration for a day of
comparison measurements. The penthouse has, unfortunately, been
experiencing some rather large temperature swings which add an extra
challenge for the instruments working in there.
In the FTS lab, thick clouds were the disappointment of the morning.
But smiles came back out with the sun around 1:45 pm, and the two FTIR
instruments measured until dinner called.
After dinner, several members of the team headed out for a walk on the
frozen fiord - it is amazing that it is now light enough for good
visibility after dinner, when it was still dark all day when we
arrived. The sonde launched smoothly, and reached 7.9 hPa. There was
also a pretty good crowd for BINGO, but the prize winning was a bit
lopsided, with Emily and Alastair, one of the Kenn Borek pilots,
winning all eight rounds!