On Friday March 9th, the team woke up to temperatures around -42 degrees at the weather station, which remained at this level for the remainder of the day. Up at the Ridge Lab the temperature started at -30 degrees, remained fairly constant at that for a few hours, before spiking to -24 degrees in the early afternoon. After about an hour at this temperature it proceeded to slowly fall back down to -30 degrees over the course of the afternoon. While a small amount of ice crystals fell during the early morning, by noon the sky was clear and sunny, allowing the team to make use of the 9 hours and 20 minutes of sunlight expected for the day.
On their way to the Ridge Lab in the morning the campaign team encountered surprisingly heavy traffic coming the opposite direction. But rather than another car, it was actually a lone Arctic wolf coming along the road! The wolf seemed to be in a hurry to get to wherever it was heading and didn’t stick around for very long, but the team was nonetheless happy to see it, for some of them it was the first animal they’ve seen since they arrived in Eureka.
In the IR lab Erik and Sébastien took 184 NIR measurements. Erik analyzed the N2O cell tests and Sébastien the HCl cell tests. Those revealed a possible misalignment issue with the 1.15 mm aperture, used for typical MIR measurements, while the cell tests done with the 1mm aperture, used for typical NIR measurements, indicates good alignment. Erik and Sébastien will investigate the issue further using the alignment kit. At the end of the day Sébastien started another HCl cell test.
Last night the skies were finally clear, allowing Ghazal to run the DIAL and make some measurements, something she had been waiting for the opportunity to do.
In the morning Paul checked on SPS and its tracker which had been left to run overnight and found them to be operating as expected. Around 11 o’clock Paul reset the tracker and SPS control software to avoid memory issues, and while the computer reset he double checked the communication connection on the roof. After this he left the SPS and tracker to run. Periodic checks were made on SPS and SAOZ, and Paul left SPS to run overnight.
Since both GBSs continue to operate normally, Kristof spent some time setting up the profile retrievals for the MAX-DOAS BrO data. He's hoping to have the profiles ready as soon as the ozonesonde and radiosonde data (required for the retrieval) are available.
In the morning Xin and John collected snow samples from three sampling sites. They first visited the site at the end of the runway, followed by the two sites about 5km to the west of the station. In the afternoon, Xin spent some time packing samples to get them ready for transit.
In the evening, the team watched the ozonesonde launch from the warmth of the rec room in the weather station. Afterwards they each worked on their individual projects and tasks. The team hopes that the cooperative weather they’ve been experiencing continues to hold to make up for the poor weather at the start of the campaign.
Cheers,
Paul Jeffery
[On Behalf of the 2018 Canadian ACE/OSIRIS Arctic Validation Campaign Team]