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ABSTRACT International Polar Year has seen the expansion of several major Arctic Atmospheric laboratories. The PEARL laboratory at Eureka, Nunavut is the Canadian contribution to this enterprise. PEARL is a refurbishment of an existing... more
ABSTRACT International Polar Year has seen the expansion of several major Arctic Atmospheric laboratories. The PEARL laboratory at Eureka, Nunavut is the Canadian contribution to this enterprise. PEARL is a refurbishment of an existing laboratory for studying stratospheric ozone, but its mission has been extended to include air quality and climate issues. The laboratory is now home to over 25 instruments studying the atmosphere from the ground to approximately 100km. These cover a range of in situ and remote sounding instruments including lidars, spectrometers and samplers. Besides the direct measurement role, PEARL supports the validation of a variety of polar orbiting satellites. Due to the geometry of a sun synchronous orbit, PEARL gets the maximum number of overpasses possible and this makes it ideal for validation and calibration for the Arctic region. As a contributor to the measurements of the "Arctic ring" of laboratories, PEARL covers the Canadian sector. Since Canada has a large territorial land mass in the Arctic, this is of national strategic interest. This talk will highlight some of the latest operating results from PEARL and also serve as an introduction to the facility and its capabilities.