On Tuesday February 27, the weather at the station started around -24 degrees and steadily warmed throughout the day to a balmy (for Eureka this time of year) -19 degrees, coupled with an overcast sky throughout the day and leading into some light snow in the evening. Up at PEARL the day started at a lower -28 degrees before similarly warming to nearly -23 degrees in the evening. During the day we had about 5 hours and 45 minutes of sunlight, though it was unable to pierce the cloudy skies. While the weather continues to be uncooperative, the team has managed to keep busy and are looking forward to the next clear day.
Kristof finished the lab tests for the PEARL-GBS, and took some extra measurements to characterize the CCD linearity and noise. Since it was still too windy to work on the roof, he spent the afternoon analyzing the results of the lab tests. No solar measurements were taken with the Bruker FTIR because of overcast skies.
Erik did a N2O cell test. Then Erik and Sébastien prepared the instrument for a measurement of 1000 scans of the MIR source, this will help investigate the contribution of channeling errors in the retrievals. Sébastien started to unpack and put together the alignment kit.
Due to the persistently overcast weather DIAL did not operate last night. It is fully operational and Ghazal and Alexey are waiting for clear skies.
Yesterday evening the CRL was making routine measurements. The count rates looked favorable for a depolarization calibration, and with a low pressure system bringing the temperature at the station up to -24 degrees, the possibility of thicker clouds overnight (and thus even higher count rates for the calibration) was encouraging. Emily ran the calibration for 10 hours overnight, and the results were good. This morning, she put the lidar back into regular operations mode and CRL has continued its measurements of the thick clouds over Eureka.
In the morning Paul ensured that the instruments he’s supporting, such as SAOZ, were operating as expected. In the afternoon he assisted Xin and Peter collect a vertical snow profile from the sea ice of the fjord.
The SPS continued normal operations on the roof of the Ridge Lab and analysis of preliminary data was continued by Tom.
In the morning, Xin collected his first snow samples from behind the PEARL Ridge Lab. With help from Peter, he measured snow density and collected samples for salinity and ion chromatography analysis. In the afternoon, Xin, Peter and Paul re-visited the sea ice sampling site. With help from Peter and Paul, he successfully collected snow samples at the same site for time series analysis. Snow salinity analysis will be made in the 0PAL lab with a conductivity meter.
Additionally, the team is looking forward to the first ozonesonde launch that should be occurring tomorrow. It’s always quite a sight to see and usually draws a crowd from the weather station.
Cheers,
Paul Jeffery
[On Behalf of the 2018 Canadian ACE/OSIRIS Arctic Validation Campaign Team]