Inside the polar vortex

 Since Friday 19 November, the team at PEA is launching every second day a weather balloon with a radiosonde for measuring the vertical profile of temperature, relative humidity, wind and pressure. At the moment, the Antarctic ozone hole has started to be 'filled up' again.  However, yesterday's radio sounding happened inside the Antarctic polar vortex, with very high wind speeds between 15 and 20 km altitude, strong westerly winds and low temperature - as can be seen on the graph below (note however, that the humidity values above around 10 km are only indicative).  Total ozone was also very low respectively, with values between 150 and 200 DU. 

Season 2021-2022 at PEA has started

Last week, the first technical team arrived at Princess Elisabeth station Antarctica. They have been busy to put the station back into operational mode. Since yesterday, 15/11/2021, the Brewer ozone spectrophotometer is installed again and can monitor the total ozone amount in the atmospheric column. This year's ozone hole is again very important (see here). The first measurements of our Brewer instrument revealed values between 131 and 170 DU. These are very low values, but could be expected due to the still lasting ozone hole over the Antarctic continent. 

This season, two of our research colleagues, Preben and Andy, will travel to the station. Their planned flight from Cape Town, South Africa, to Antarctica is on 7 December. We will keep you updated on this blog on the activities during this season.