On Thursday March 1st the temperature at the Eureka weather station remained steady at about -22 degrees, and up at the Ridge Lab it hovered around an astonishingly warm -15 degrees. The start of March was accompanied by approximately 6 hours and 35 minutes of sunlight, though the cloud cover that we’ve come to associate with the start of this year’s campaign has yet to lift. The team is awaiting the day when the clouds let up and the sun finally becomes visible, and they’re hoping that this will occur any day now.
In the morning Kristof finished the lab tests for the UT-GBS and restarted the instrument. The winds have finally lessened, so Kristof and Peter were able to open the PEARL-GBS tracker box on the roof. The communication problem they’ve witnessed seems to likely be caused by signal loss in the cables leading up to the roof, and Kristof will continue troubleshooting tomorrow.
Emily ran the CRL for 24 hours, took lab inventory and tidied the lab in preparation for her departure.
Today Xin visited a new inland sampling site, which is near to the sea ice site, with an altitude of 38 m above the sea level. This site was chosen with the goal of making a gradient comparison for snow chemistry from sea ice to inland. Snow samples were collected from here, along with on the sea ice, during the morning. In the afternoon, he performed snow salinity measurements for the samples collected yesterday. A preliminary interpretation to the salinity results was made, but a firmer conclusion requires more data.
Sébastien and Erik spent the day checking the alignment of the Bruker FTIR. When they arrived in the morning at the Ridge Lab, they found the HeNe laser they were using for the alignment procedure had stopped working. With the help of Alexey and Pierre, a spare laser was located in the DIAL lab and Sébastien and Erik were able continue the alignment procedure by checking the position of the observed fringes at all optical path differences. No adjustments had been made to the instrument's optical components and they hope to resume solar measurements when clear skies return.
In the morning, Paul checked on both SAOZ and SPS and found that SPS was not measuring in the direction its software thought it was. After a bit of troubleshooting, SPS pointing was corrected and resumed nominal operations. Paul performed further checks during the day and found SPS to be performing as it should. Analysis of preliminary SPS data was continued by Tom.
As with the past few days, due to the overcast weather DIAL was not operated last night. It is fully operational and Ghazal and Alexey are waiting for a clear night.
In the afternoon, there was an interruption in the CANDAC satellite communications system that cut the members of the campaign team off from the Internet. This problem was resolve the following morning. The team used this "offline" time to socialize or get some reading in, making the most of the situation.
Cheers,
Paul Jeffery
[On Behalf of the 2018 Canadian ACE/OSIRIS Arctic Validation Campaign Team]