Traveling to the Arctic and the Pre-campaign Phase
Early morning on Friday February 23rd, five members of the 2018 Canadian
Arctic ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaign began their journey to Eureka with
a flight out of Toronto. The five team members consisted of Sebastian
Roche, Erik Lutsch, Kristof Bognar, and Paul Jeffery, who had all
participated in previous campaigns, and a new member working on a
collaborative project, Xin Yang. Four hours after departing Toronto the
team arrived in Calgary for a brief layover, and shortly after were on
their way to their destination for the day, Yellowknife. Shortly after 1
o'clock local time the team landed in Yellowknife, marking the start of
their three weeks in the Arctic. The five members of them spent the rest
of the day in Yellowknife gathering any last-minute supplies they
needed, and concluded the day with dinner followed by a short walk to
try to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis.
At 8 o'clock on Saturday morning the team departed Yellowknife on a
charted flight to Eureka. The flight was long but uneventful, making two
brief stopovers along the way for refueling, at Cambridge Bay and
Resolute Bay, landing in Eureka around 5 in the evening. The newly
arrived team members were greeted by Eureka Weather Station Personnel,
the CANDAC operators on site, and the members of the 2018 campaign team
who had arrived earlier to begin work in the pre-campaign phase of the
mission, namely Emily McCullough, Ghazal Farhani, Alexey Tikhomirov, Jim Drummond and
Tom McElroy. The newly arrived team members settled into their
accommodations and their newest member, Xin, was given a tour of the
Eureka Weather station by the station program manager. Saturday night
concluded with the team catching up, making plans for the following day,
and afterwards watching the Olympic hockey finals.
A summary of the pre-campaign activities was provided as follows:
-The DIAL lidar at the Ridge Lab, operated by Alexey and Ghazal, has
been taking nightly measurements since February 7th. Measurements in
clear night condition averaged 12-hours per night at the start of the
pre-campaign period. Polar sunrise has arrived and the shorter nights
now allow 10-hour measurements, which are typical of the start of the
intensive phase. With two DIAL operators on site and help from Thierry
Leblanc (JPL) the data is getting processed quickly, and we've already
been looking at ozone profile results from the 2018 measurements made so
far.
-The CRL at 0PAL is operable 24 hours per day, and is taken care of by
Emily. She operated the lidar remotely early in the year before
traveling to Eureka in the pre-campaign phase. The lasers require
regular maintenance, and the rotating polarizer in the detection system
has been giving some odd results since December. Emily diagnosed and
remedied the polarotor problem this week, with calibration measurements
before and after. Measurements are now back to normal, in time for the
intensive phase of the campaign. Then remaining routine maintenance and
calibrations can be carried out during the next week as weather allows.
Quicklook plots of CRL results will be available for the campaign team
approximately daily.
-On February 20th Tom McElroy and Pierre Fogal moved Brewer Ozone
Spectrophotometer #111 from the Eureka Weather Station at sea level up
to the PEARL lab at 610 m. They also transported the shipping case with
the York SunPhotoSpectrometer (SPS) and solar tracker to the lab. The
following day was used to check out the computer system, tracker and SPS
in the lab to ensure that it would be ready to go up on the roof to make
observations. Within two days of that the equipment was set up and made
ready for observations and, by Saturday the 24th. the system was fully
operational.
Overall it’s been a busy few days, principally consisting of travel up
to Eureka for a large portion of the team, but the team is settling in
well and looking forward to a productive campaign.
Cheers,
Paul Jeffery
[On Behalf of the 2018 Canadian ACE/OSIRIS Arctic
Validation Campaign team]