It has become increasingly cold here. Eureka was -42 °C throughout the afternoon, which is not particularly unusual for this time of year; however, the temperature outside PEARL was -42 °C when we arrived and -62 °C with the wind chill. The heating system in the Ridge Lab has not been able to keep up with the cold and the wind outside (which peaked near 60 km/hr). The lab was around 10 °C today, despite the efforts of a couple courageous space heaters.
In the IR lab, Joseph and Dan were unable to take measurements with the Bruker today due to cloudy weather conditions. The sun tracker was set up and we were ready to take data, but the signal never became close to intense enough, even at high gain. Debora took background and cell measurements with PARIS.
In the UV-Vis lab, all Xiaoyi's instruments are operating. Xiaoyi is comparing the UT-GBS and PEARL-GBS data, and the signal has been really good! Xiaoyi also finished the DSCDs analysis for the UT-GBS using the last two days of measurements. He also started installing the new ibootbar for the PEARL-GBS. After this change was made, Xiaoyi discovered the PEARL-GBS filter wheel had become stuck. The filter wheel is needed only during direct Sun measurements, so Xiaoyi is planning to leave PEARL-GBS in MAX-DOAS and Zenith-sky mode when he is not available to monitor the instrument until this issue can be resolved.
At 1 pm, Pierre decided to return the team to the Weather Station due to poor weather conditions, cold temperatures and to allow the mechanics to work on the plumbing system, which had failed.
Near Eureka, Volodya spent most of the day trying to fix communication issues with Brewer 192, which he is installing on the instrument platform. Unfortunately, it is still not working properly. Volodya has made progress by eliminating a few possible causes. He will continue to seek out a fix for this issue tomorrow.
0PAL had a productive day. The CRL took a full 24 hours of measurements. Emily processed some polarized data and worked on creating plots. She has been actively assessing the water vapour channel, and plans to install another filter tomorrow. Later in the day, she joined Pierre at the flux tower and started learning the SAFIRE operating procedures in preparation for the extended phase of the campaign.
Today's ACE ozonesonde flight occurred at 18:15 and reached an altitude of 30,218 m and 8.5 millibars.
The weather has been quite troublesome lately. If anyone is able to invent a means of weather control, we would be grateful!