Since a bit more than a week, Princess Elisabeth station is open again. The first team around Alain Hubert arrived and has been busy with putting back the station in operational mode for summer season. On the website of the station you can follow the general activities.
Last week, the first radio soundings with weather balloons have been done again. See the first image below. The jet stream in the upper troposphere was particularly strong (almost 60 m/s) and wind peaked in the stratosphere around 26 km altitude again. It means that the polar vortex was situated above the region of PEA. This year, the ozone hole over Antarctica seems to last again longer than usual (see here). Since last week, the station team set up again our ozone spectrophotometer which measures UV radiation and the total atmospheric ozone column. From the second graph below, you can see that the UV index reached around local noon bit above 11, meaning that non-protected skin get hurt within 10-15 minutes. This is a direct effect of the reduced total ozone (around 160 DU) due to the ozone hole.
This season we will also be back at the station with two people from our PASPARTOUT project. We will keep you updated on this blog of the related activities.
