Weekly CASPO Seminar: join us on Zoom every Wednesday at 3:30 pm to hear about the latest and greatest in Climate, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physical Oceanography!
Professor Kimberly Strong, the current Chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto, will give a talk titled The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory: Probing the atmosphere of the high Arctic at 80N.
The High Arctic is a bellwether for global climate change, a receptor for global pollution, and a driver for the global climate system. Measurements “on the ground” are essential if we are to understand what environmental changes are happening in the Arctic and why. To provide such measurements, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) was established in 2005 by a group of university and government researchers called the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change (CANDAC). PEARL is located at 80N, 86W on Ellesmere Island, where Environment and Climate Change Canada has operated the Eureka Weather Station since 1947. More than 20 instruments are installed at PEARL, spread across three facilities; these include active (e.g., radars, lidars) and passive (e.g., spectrometers, imagers) sounders that provide complementary measurements of many atmospheric properties. Additional instruments are brought to PEARL on a campaign basis, particularly during the annual springtime Canadian Arctic ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaigns. Research at PEARL is currently being carried out under the Probing the Atmosphere of the High Arctic (PAHA) program, which has three research themes: Composition Measurements, Polar Night, and Satellite Validation. The former includes projects investigating greenhouse gases related to the carbon cycle, ozone and related species, biomass burning, and clouds, aerosols, and precipitation. This presentation will provide an overview of PEARL and PAHA, including scientific motivation, objectives, and instrumentation, as well as some highlights from more than a decade of atmospheric measurements.
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