When the team left the station at around 8:35 am in the morning, yesterdays high winds had disappeared entirely. The sky was perfectly clear, without a single cloud. After a smooth half an hour ride, the team arrived at the Ridge Lab. Today's sun rise was as early as about 9:10 am. To seize as much of the almost 8 hours of daylight and perfect atmospheric conditions as possible, the team prepared their instruments for measurements quickly.
While Kristof was still busy with the PEARL-GBS in the afternoon, smoothly running measurements allowed Sébastien, Erik and Ellen to sneak out for an incredible walk across the ridge opposite the lab. The clear sky conditions of the morning hadn't changed in the slightest, so the viewing distance was quite remarkable and the feeling of marvellous remoteness was even more engaging.
Mid-infrared solar measurements resumed today with the Bruker 125HR as clear skies returned. Sébastien and Erik were able to perform 90 solar measurements, an improvement over Tuesday's 66 measurements, due to longer daylight hours. With both the HBr and N2O cell tests completed, Sébastien and Erik will continue solar mid-infrared measurements in the following days as the weather permits. They hope to maximize the number of measurements before switching to near-infrared measurements on 12 March.
Unfortunately, Kristof was not able to set up the PEARL-GBS today due to some persistent connection problems with the sun-tracker. The remaining issues, however, are not prohibitive, so measurements can start while troubleshooting continues.
Today's solar measurements with PARIS-IR proceeded without any issues. Ellen started measuring at 9:48 am, stopping no sooner than 4:13 pm when declining detector gains announced the upcoming sun set. In total, she managed to take 46 measurements.
The CRL collected data for 24 hours on 3 March (UTC). The lidar continues to run well, including remotely from the ridge lab (while simultaneously running the DIAL lidar with Ghazal). Emily also did some work on the CRL lab computer, compressing and backing up data files from the past several years, and creating more useable space on the computer's internal hard drive so that the 2016 data will comfortably fit.
In the evening of 3 March, Emily and Ghazal went to the ridge lab to operate the DIAL. The DIAL operation went smoothly. Due to thick clouds, the receiving signal from the first two hours of operation was weak. The sky cleared up around 11:00 pm local time, and the receiving signals became strong. Measurements continued until 7:00 am.
The launch of today's Raven ozonesonde at 6:15 pm went smoothly as James did a great job as a runner. The balloon rose to a maximum altitude of 33086 m at an ascent rate of 197 m/minute.