Aerocloud Teamhas arrived at Princess Elisabeth station

Quentin and Christian arrived safely last week Friday, early in the morning at 1am, at Utsteinen. Unfortunately, our air cargo boxes carrying several scientific instruments  (like the new MAX-DOAS, the radiosounding equipment or the Laser Aerosol Spectrometer) have not been with them for their flight to Antarctica. The boxes were still in Amsterdam for for us unknown reasons, although they were picked up in time in Belgium. Finally, they arrived end of November in Cape Town, South Africa, and will be flown in by the next Ilyushin cargo flight, scheduled for today. After their arrival, Quentin and Christian checked that the already installed scientific instrumentation worked well, and  that all necessary accessories were there. 

 Measured effective UV Index at Princess Elisabeth station on 30 November 2015

 

As the weather conditions have been very good the last days, they have already been able to re-install the Brewer ozone spectrophotometer, which measures the total atmospheric column amount of ozone. This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the largest and total ozone amounts over Dronning Maud Land, the region where also Princess Elisabeth station is located, are still extremely low, between 150 and 200 Dobson units. As ozone protects us against the harmful UV radiation, lower total ozone values mean higher values of the UV index, which reached values up to 12 (!) during the last days. A value above 10 means that unprotected human skin will get sunburned within 10 minutes. At the station, the team members can follow the local UV index evolution in real-time and can thus protect their skin and eyes accordingly. The link to the near-real time UV index at Utsteinen can be found here (if there is no image, then the satellite link to the station is down at that moment). 

 The special cloud bringing very light snowfall and white frost to Utsteinen

 

But we are not only interested in atmospheric gases, also particles and particularly clouds interest us. A very special one occurred on Saturday, 28 November. In the evening, a close-to-the-ground stratus, resembling to fog, was advected from NE. During the time of its passage, visibility was significantly reduced, light snowfall was present and there was white frost formation. Such white frost formation we have never before experienced at the station, very special thus. The event lasted bit more than 3 hours, and afterwards the white frost sublimated rapidly. The next days, Quentin and Christian will do some necessary calibration and maintenance work of the scientific instrumentation and will welcome the boxes with the other instruments and equipment.

Team about to leave Belgium for Antarctica

This Saturday, Quentin Laffineur  (RMI) and Christian Hermans (Institute for Space Aeronomy) will start their journey from Belgium to Princess Elisabeth station Antarctica. As mentioned before, they will take care of all measurements and instrumentation for the AEROCLOUDproject. The scientific activities will take place in the framework of this year’s scientifc  Belgian Antarctic expedition  (BELARE 2015-2016), which is organised by the Polar Secretariat and the Belgian Federal Science Policy (BELSPO). The expedition is supported by the Belgian Secretary of State for the federal science policy, Ms Elke Sleurs, and is also supported by the Ministry of Defense (logistic support and personnel).

After arrival, Quentin and Christian will check several instruments for detecting clouds and precipitation, and properties of ambient aerosol particles. For the first time, all these instruments have been operational whole year-round. This means, also during the time when the station is uninhabited and the instruments rely on remote control. They will also re-install several instruments which cannot operate for several reasons during Antarctic winter (Cimel sunphotometer, Brewer ozone spectrophotometer), or which have been in Belgium for repair. In addition, there are again some newcomer-instruments.  In total, Quentin and Christian will have to deal with 13 instruments, plus the automatic weather station and weather balloon launches, and this within just tight 4 weeks. I wish them all the best and good luck for their work.

Instruments still operational and station is about to be opened again for the summer

The first Belare (Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition) team for this austral summer is about to arrive at Princess Elisabeth station. Their flight from Cape Town to Antarctica is scheduled for tomorrow. After arrival at the station they will be busy to prepare the station for austral summer operation. This means to clear the accumulated snow, check the IT- and power generation system, setting up again the water procurement system, and everything else what is needed for daily life at the station. Further teams will arrive one week and two weeks later. With that third team, also a first group of scientists will arrive. From our institute, it will be Quentin Laffineur who will join the Belare team. It will be his second stay in Antarctica. Last season he has been there together with me. This time, our colleage Christian Hermans from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy will also join. It will be his first time in Antarctica. Quentin and Christian will take care of all instrumentation for atmospheric composition and cloud, precipitation detection, the automatic weather station, and they will also be responsible for regular launches of weather balloons. In addition, there will be some new instruments to be installed. Quite a lot of work. I will describe these instruments later in more detail and, as usual, we will also tell how life is about at Princess Elisabeth station.

monthly values of the particle number concentration (in cm3) from Nov-2014 ('1') to Oct-2015 ('12')

Another very important point is that our instruments are still in operation,without any break. We are very near to a complete year of data, two weeks missing yet. This is a great succes - having these kind of instruments in operation, only by remote control, without human direct maintenance, in these harsh environmental conditions and mainly sustained by renewable energies, is quite unique. This also means that we have already a very nice data set for our main scientific project AEROCLOUD at the station. The graphic above shows the monthly means of total particle concentration (in number per cm3) for November 2014 ('1') to October 2015 ('12'). The blue bars are the medians and blue and red together give the average value. Also the error bars are given. As already told in my last post, a nice seasonal cycle can be seen, also the influence of some events during which the number concentration increased distinctly (what causes that the median and average values differ markedly). The increase from August to October is very steep and the concentration for October is relatively high, especially when comparing with the concentrations during the summer months December to March. There have been several events during which the concentrations increased to some thousands of particles per cm3. There is a lot of promising information to be exploited scientifically. So, as the season is about to start, I will try to update this blog regularly.

Record for duration of data time series

We are now in September, this means deep winter in Antarctica is over and more and more sunshine is coming back. There is already more than 10 hours sunlight per day at Utsteinen. And the instruments are still operational, without any break since the last team left Utsteinen in February !! This means a new record. The longest period for continuous aerosol data until now has been from November 2013 until the morning hours of 1 September 2014. This is great news and many thanks have to go to the team members who prepared the station’s energy system for the uninhabited period (and who are supervising it remotely from Belgium). But it also means that our own precautionary measures for unattended instrument operation are paying out. Now let’s hope that it keeps going until another BELARE expedition team arrives at Princess Elisabeth station.

Particle number per cm³ at Utsteinen from November 2014 to August 2015

 

The figure shows the time series of the particle number concentration from November 2014 until end of August 2015. The data are cleared of any contamination. It can be seen that from November to March the mean concentration was around some hundreds of particles per cm³, with a peak around end of February/beginning of March. The mean number concentration decreased afterwards to reach a minimum in June, July. In August, number concentrations started to increase again. During June and July, the number concentration fell to some tens of particles per cm³. During austral winter, the Antarctic vortex, the atmospheric circulation, forms a quasi-barrier for air masses from lower latitudes. Also during winter, there is hardly any sunlight for driving photooxidative aerosol chemistry and there is a general lack of precursor gases for new particle formation and condensational growth of particles. However, over the whole time period, there were several events, when the number concentration increased distinctly over very short periods of time, often to some thousand particles per cm³. Most probably, these periods reflect the influence of air masses transported to Princess Elisabeth station via synoptic scale events (cyclones, transporting air masses from easterly directions, including maritime origin), indicate entrainment of air masses from the higher troposphere, or indicate periods when new particle formation could be detected at PE.

All under remote control

Time has been flying and in the meantime it is end of February 2015. Princess Elisabeth station is uninhabited since two days. During the past two months, Johnny, the station’s main engineer, took care of our instruments and also of the balloon radio soundings. All instruments have been operating fine, including the sunphotometer. At the very last days of Quentin’s and my stay we managed to get the sunphotometer operational. It appeared to be an ordinary power issue – a loose contact at the battery. It is very good that this instrument has done measurements now for two months – for the vast Antarctic continent there are very few of its kind installed, although its main output, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) is a widely used parameter in global chemical transport models. Our other problem child, the size distribution instrument, had itself no failure. But, unluckily, during a storm in mid-January very little snow intruded into the aerosol measurement container, however, exactly onto the laptop which was used for that instrument. Snow smelts and thus the laptop broke… Nevertheless, help arrived with a feeder flight beginning of February. That flight brought in Stephan Bracke from RMI’s department in Dourbes. He came for installing new instrumentation for Geomagneticobservations. But he also brought with him a new laptop for running the aerosol size distribution instrument. So, we were lucky to have at least a total of 6 weeks of data from this instrument. At the end of the season, Johnny dismounted it and it will be repaired and calibrated in order to be re-installed during summer season 2015-2016. Like this instrument, also the Cloud Condensation Nuclei counter (CCNc) of TROPOS (Leipzig, Germany) and the sunphotometer will be shipped back. The sunphotometer will undergo its yearly calibration (in addition, there is hardly enough sun for it during winter) and the CCNc will be used for other measurement campaigns (and hopefully will be back next season). The Brewer ozone spectrophotometer also has been dismounted. It could continue with its measurements automatically, however, its mechanics and optics are very sensitive. If anything happens during the winter months – there is nobody to quickly stop it or repair it – and the risk is too high that this very expensive instrument encounters serious damage. It is stored safely in PE until next season. The ground equipment and antennas for the radio soundings are also shipped back to Brussels. We want to compare some of these radio sondes with the radio sondes type we are using operationally in Brussels. This will help to raise the confidence and accuracy of the radio sondes’ data. Altogether, this meant a lot of dismounting and packing work for Johnny. And a lot of cargo-customs-paper work for me. Now, there remain four aerosol instruments operational – the TEOM-FDSM, the aethalometer, the nephelometer and the condensation particle counter. At this place I want to express my gratefulness to Johnny who took great care of all the instrumentation! Now lets keep fingers crossed that everything goes well down there in the Antarctic.