After a busy weekend of science and wildlife sightings, the team enjoyed another routine day of measurements at PEARL. Temperatures in Eureka have remained near -42°C, close to what they have been for the last few days. Temperatures at the PEARL Ridge Lab were warmer today, reaching as high as -28°C.
In the PEARL Ridge Lab's IR lab, Dan took 100 MIR measurements with the Bruker and continued to work on the new Bruker SOP document. Sebastien took 31 measurements with PARIS.
Xiaoyi is pleased that the PEARL-GBS dome remains finally clear of frost. The UT-GBS, PEARL-GBS and SAOZ continue to operate normally. Xiaoyi attempted to upgrade the OpenCV module needed for PEARL-GBS active tracking, but has not been able to do so yet. He is considering installing a new operating system, Mint, to run the Trax2 tracking code.
Paul cleared light frost from window of SPS. He also installed a new SPS macro sent by Zahra that aims to eliminate the tracker communication issue. This fix comes with a drawback: the new macro requires that the SPS software is closed at the end of the day and restarted in the morning. SPS is operating nominally with new macro in place.
The liquid nitrogen generator continues to operate at a reduced capacity. Approximately half a dewar has been produced since the generator came back online. This is welcome news for Bruker and PARIS measurements.
Today's ACE ozonesonde flight occurred at 6:15 pm local time and reached an altitude of 29,444 m (8.5 hPa). The lowest temperatures observed by the sonde flights have been decreasing over the last few days. Tonight's lowest temperature was -77.9°C, which brings the atmosphere near the threshold for Polar Stratospheric Cloud formation. The Polar Vortex continues to be above Eureka.
After dinner, Paul, Sebastien, and Dan went for a short walk up the hill near Eureka.