Even though the weather didn't look promising, the team decided to make their way up to the Ridge Lab on Saturday morning, February 29. Unfortunately, the conditions got worse rather than better with winds of to 13 m/s and higher that made the -35°C feel more like -55°C. The Sun was obstructed by clouds and no measurements were possible, so the team decided to return to the weather station for lunch. High winds prevented a safe launch of an ozonesonde from Eureka later in the day. Since the conditions presented even worse on Sunday, the team decided to stay at the weather station and focused on reviewing their efforts on the data collected to date, catching up on course work and other duties.
Beatriz and Tyler ran the LineFit analysis on the near infrared HCl cell spectra they took with the Bruker 125HR on Friday, February 28. The results were consistent with the 5 previous tests, indicating the alignment of the instrument is still good. They also got the static IP address and remote access working for the pressure sensor Raspberry Pi, so it can remain connected to the network, and they can remotely connect to it from down south. Andrew brought the pressure sensor from University of Toronto up with him, and Beatriz and Tyler are planning to install it the next time they get to the Ridge Lab. They are still waiting for sunny days for solar measurements with the Bruker 125HR and the EM27/SUN.
Due to the unfavourable weather conditions throughout the weekend, the Kristof and Ramina spent their time checking the quality of the spectra obtained from the PEARL-GBS zenith pointing measurements. The results were similar to previous years. Once the wind slows down, the GBS team will return to the roof of the Ridge Lab to fix the PEARL-GBS tracker issue. Sunny days will be used to continue aligning the Pandora instrument.
During the night of Friday, February 28, to Saturday, February 29, the weather was calm at Ridge Lab with thin layer of cloud. As the days are getting longer, Ali started observations with the DIAL around 8 PM. For a couple of hours after midnight, the clouds became thicker and the signal dropped. The signal returned to normal after the clouds passed and measurements continued normally. During the night from Saturday, February 29, to Sunday, March 1, it was windy and cloudy, with wind speeds of 20-30 km/h at 8 PM. The wind became even stronger during the course of the night reaching 50-60 km/h around 4 AM. These conditions made it impossible to make observations that night.
On 28 Feb UTC, the CRL made 24 hours of measurements with both lasers. The sky was still not clear or consistent enough to start delay depolarization calibration, so that will have to wait for after this weekend. However, it also had to be shut down over the weekend due to weather.After getting the SPS up and running again during his stay, Tom left Eureka on the plane on Saturday, February 29. The instrument is running well and collecting data during the day.
Guillaume finished repairs and calibration on E-AERI. On Saturday morning, he put the outside cover back on with Ellen's help and checked the instrument's output. He noticed that one of the thermistor was non-responsive and confirmed it was broken after a quick test. He was able to replace the thermistor and the E-AERI is fully functional now.
After this stormy weekend the team is looking forward to going up to the Ridge Lab again and hope the upcoming week will provide better measurement conditions.
Cheers,
Ellen Eckert
[on behalf of the 2020 Canadian Arctic ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaign]