After almost eight months away the CANDAC team returned to Eureka, Nunavut for the first summer campaign since 2019. The team spent just over three weeks on site after quarantining in Resolute Bay for a week and hit the ground running the Wednesday they arrived. The spring melt created a large washout on the road to the Ridge Lab, but the team was able to circumnavigate through a small stream and get to work.
Photo Courtesy of Pierre Fogal
Highlights of the trip include the installation of a new Galaxy satellite ground station unit to provide a new network connection via OneWeb. The assembly and installation went smoothly and have appeared to be running well since initialization. With this new system, there are estimates of 10x network speeds! This installation will make data transfer and communication south much easier moving forward.
Photo courtesy of Pierre Fogal
The team was able to adjust the solar input into the PEARL FTS and started to take measurements but were limited to TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network) measurements when they found the Liquid Nitrogen Plant was not operational and had to be sent south for repair. TCCON measurements look at direct solar absorption spectra in the near-infrared and measure the column-averaged components including CO2, CH4, N2O, HF, CO, H2O, and HDO. You can look at the data here.
Nice summer weather provided the team a great opportunity to re-install the Pandora 1-S sun spectrometer on the roof of the Ridge Lab. Equipped with a new Pan-tilt controller and spectrometer system this instrument is a part of the worldwide Pandora network in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. The data collected from the Pandora instruments have been used in several studies looking at validating satellite measurements, air quality monitoring, remote sensing technique research, and investigation of polar stratospheric ozone depletion.
With ever-changing requirements and restrictions, the team hopes to be traveling back to Eureka soon as there is still much to get done.
Article written by: Andrew Hall – Arctic Technical Specialist