Today was mostly cloudy in Eureka, and the team was busy getting instruments ready for the 2014 measurement campaign. The temperature inversion kept PEARL 10°C warmer than Eureka, which was -42°C today. The Sun rose shortly past 9 AM today, and set shortly before 4 PM at PEARL (earlier for Eureka because of the elevation difference). Much of the day's sunlight was obscured by clouds, however.
The Polar Vortex has experienced a series of minor Sudden Stratospheric Warmings (SSWs) recently, leading to a distorted shape. It currently extends from Manitoba and Ontario across the Arctic to Eureka, and to Siberia.
In the PEARL Ridge Lab's IR lab, a recently-installed suntracker has been working well in passive tracking mode. The suntracker's dome can be opened and closed remotely, which is convenient. Joseph and Dan are in touch with Jonathan Franklin at Dalhousie University, who was heavily involved in the suntracker's control code development, to optimize its performance. There are issues with the camera's ability to work on active mode at the moment. Solving this will be a task for a sunny day.
The Bruker has been in operation for the last few days thanks to the pre-campaign team of Pierre and Mike. When they arrived at the lab this morning, Joseph and Dan performed routine maintenance on the Bruker and did an HBr cell measurement. Joseph analyzed the results of the cell test, which looked good. They acquired 13 MIR Bruker measurements.
Dan has nearly finished setting up PARIS, with assistance from Paul and Joseph. Debora usually runs PARIS, but is away on maternity leave, giving Dan the opportunity to become familiar with another FTS instrument. The new pick-off mirror set up is working well, and allows maximum input of sunlight into the instrument. This is made possible by the larger beam of sunlight sent into the IR lab by the new suntracker. The PARIS GPS has had trouble locking onto a signal, so Dan has been in touch with the PARIS team at U of T about troubleshooting. GPS trouble won't prevent measurements, which will begin once the clouds pass.
Lastly, SAOZ (which resides on the roof of the Ridge Lab, but whose computer is in the IR lab) was installed by Pierre during the pre-campaign and has been taking measurements since yesterday.
Over in the UV-Vis Lab, Sophie is getting used to working on the mezzanine. Despite Xiaoyi's warnings to carefully watch her head, she's had a few painful experiences banging her head on the many odd ceiling features. Head bumps notwithstanding, she had a very productive first day at PEARL. Sophie installed a shutter on the P-GBS, which is now taking measurements. Its measurement mode has been switched on to combination mode; this will take zenith-sky/direct-sun/MAX-DOAS measurements during the daytime. For the moment, the Moon is too low and cannot be seen in Eureka. The UT-GBS has been re-assembled but its CCD needs to be re-aligned tomorrow.
Also working in the UV-Vis lab, Tom and Zahra unpacked SPS, MAESTRO and their tracker. The support computers are up and running. The full system has been tested indoors and is working nominally. Laser scans and mercury lamp data have been collected. Everything appears to be operating properly. Quartz windows were attached to the ends of the lens barrels of both instruments to mitigate the problem of snow accumulation at the entrance windows of the instruments. This problem caused the loss of data in 2013.
Paul helped Tom and Zahra run power and data cables for the instruments up to the roof. They are ready to install the tracker and instruments tomorrow.
At 0PAL, the CRL has had a successful first two days. After arriving yesterday evening, Emily and Sham set up the lab and took routine measurements in the visible channels with the green laser overnight. They obtained 9 hours of measurements.
This morning, they stopped measurements to re-install the pump chamber in the UV laser. They also tested the UV laser and aligned both lasers together on the laser table. After performing routine maintenance on the cooling systems of both lasers, Emily and Sham cooperated with Chris (in Halifax at Dalhousie University, supporting the campaign remotely) to take advantage of the clear skies at Eureka. They did an alignment procedure and plan to take measurements in all UV and all Visible channels overnight.
ACE ozonesonde flights are scheduled to begin March 1.
This evening, Paul, Dan, Zahra and Sophie took an hour-long walk from Eureka in the twilight. On their way back, the CRL had started taking measurements, and they were treated to the spectacular view of a green laser ascending far into the high Arctic sky.
Tomorrow will be another very busy day. Hopefully, with plenty of sunlight!