Dan Weaver

Dan Weaver is a graduate student at the University of Toronto whose research takes him to PEARL, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Ellesmere Island, near Eureka, Nunavut.

PEARL’s main building, the Ridge Lab, is 15 kilometres from Environment Canada’s Eureka Weather Station, up on a ridge overlooking stunning Arctic fiords and waterways. At 80°N latitude, PEARL is more than 4000 kilometres (about 2500 miles) north of Toronto (43°N).

But while the geographic location of the lab may be in the far north, Weaver’s work isn’t just about the remote Arctic environment – it contributes to our understanding of processes that affect the entire planet.

“The data collected at PEARL is highly valued by international collaborators because the lab’s location is strategic; it’s the only one of its kind in this part of Canada, which lends valuable data to networks of observatories around the world,” says Weaver. “As scientists advance our understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere, PEARL contributes a key piece of the puzzle."

Weaver is spending a month conducting research at PEARL – and he’s filing occasional dispatches to www.news.utoronto.ca complete with photos.

Across North America, many people are already fed up with the cold

It was interesting for us to watch recent media coverage of the Polar Vortex. It brought unusually cold weather to large parts of North America, and all of a sudden a topic usually confined to Arctic atmospheric research meetings was hitting the front page of newspapers (it even hit TV shows like the Colbert Report!). Our team thinks quite a bit about the effect the Polar Vortex has on atmospheric chemistry. While we are at PEARL, we monitor it daily. It plays an important role in ozone depletion, for example.

One of the distinct advantages of PEARL is that it typically sits inside the Polar Vortex, and sometimes outside. Our measurements give the atmospheric science community a critically useful view into this fascinating atmospheric phenomenon.

Any advice for surviving winter?

Dress warmly and spend time outdoors. It is tempting to stay inside all the time during winter. Getting outside and finding ways to have fun will lift your spirits, keep you active, and help the season pass enjoyably. If we can occasionally go out on hikes in the extreme environment at PEARL, you can do it where you live! There are lots of great activities outside in the winter: cross-country skiing is a favorite of mine, as is snow-shoeing.

Members of the PEARL team occasionally take a break and go for a hike especially on a sunny afternoon. It's a fantastic way to get some exercise and emotionally recharge, even when the temperature is below -30°C before windchill.

(At right: teammate Emily McCullough celebrates a long hike; photo by Dan Weaver.)

Up in Eureka, hikes can be amazing, without being too demanding because you can go at your own pace and take breaks as needed. The heavy boots and parkas we wear add to our challenge! The scenery is gorgeous on a sunny day.

One of my favorite parts to being outside in the winter is seeing wildlife. Near PEARL, that often includes Arctic hares and foxes (pictured below; photo by Zen Mariani).

I went for a hike from Eureka at twilight last year two days before leaving. It was amazingly quiet and peaceful. We encountered a curious Arctic fox, which followed us halfway back to the station. That’s an incredible memory, far superior than watching another hour of TV!

Back in Ontario, I enjoy seeing deer, rabbits and a variety of birds.

The key to enjoying winter activities is wearing the right set of clothes. With the appropriate outfit, you can be comfortable in almost any weather.

A good base layer makes a world of difference. When it’s *very* cold, a set of long underwear and a warm long-sleeved undershirt can make a huge difference. I picked up a couple of good ones from Mountain Equipment Co-op when I started “wintering” in the high Arctic. Combined with fleece mid-layers, thick socks, a scarf and good hat, you’ll be in good shape! I often wear two pairs of gloves: a heavy pair on top of a light one for warmth, and in case I need to remove the heavy pair to work with an instrument outdoors or take a photo with my camera.

In the Arctic, I add a face mask, snow pants, and a heavy parka. The photo at right of me with Emily McCullough was taken by McCullough on a walk in -45ºC weather.

You'll be filing your first dispatch to ��TV News from Eureka soon. If people have questions, they can email uoftnews@utoronto.ca. Can they also reach you via Twitter?

Yes, people can reach the team through the @CREATEArcticSci Twitter account. I can’t always reply immediately because we are often busy in the lab and sometimes the Internet connection cuts out, but we will do our best.

There will be occasional updates to the blog (http://createarcticscience.wordpress.com/) where we welcome comments.

We also have a (simple) campaign website, which will host daily photo albums: http://acebox.uwaterloo.ca/eureka/

You're working with ��TV colleagues as well as researchers from other institutions. Who else is up there and who's funding this work?

I'm in Eureka as part of the 2014 Canadian Arctic ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaign. Led by ��TV Physics professors Kaley Walker and Kimberly Strong, our team has been conducting these spring campaigns since 2004 with support from the Canadian Space Agency, Environment Canada, NSERC, and the Northern Scientific Training Program.

This year, our UofT team also includes PhD student Joseph Mendonca, postdoctoral fellow Sophie Tran, and PEARL site manager Pierre Fogal, as well as colleagues from York University and Western University.

We're grateful to the staff at Environment Canada’s Eureka Weather Station for their on-site support, and to the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Change and its funding partners. CANDAC is led by Prof. James R. Drummond of Dalhousie University and has operated PEARL since 2005.

This article is the latest in a series of stories featuring Dan Weaver in the Arctic. Read more articles:

http://news.utoronto.ca/reporting-arctic-measuring-ozone-tracking-satellites-hiking-fiords

http://news.utoronto.ca/reporting-arctic-science-behind-mission

http://news.utoronto.ca/reporting-arctic-typical-day-eureka

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Reporting from the Arctic: the science behind the mission

sgupta — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 14:25:52 +0000

Reporting from the Arctic: the science behind the mission sgupta Tue, 03/04/2014 - 09:25

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Dan Weaver adjusts the PEARL IR lab's rooftop sun tracking instrument (photo by Volodya Savastiouk)

Dan Weaver

Author legacy

Dan Weaver

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

Physics

Features

Subheadline

Dan Weaver on climate change, ozone and the magic of sunlight

Dan Weaver is a graduate student at the University of Toronto whose research takes him to PEARL, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Ellesmere Island, near Eureka, Nunavut.

Weaver will spend the next month conducting research at PEARL – and he’ll be filing weekly dispatches from the Arctic to www.news.utoronto.ca complete with photos. Do you have a question for Weaver about his research? About what it’s like to live and work where the only visitors are Arctic hares, foxes or polar bears? Email your queries to uoftnews@utoronto.ca.

You can also reach Weaver on Twitter through the @CREATEArcticSci Twitter account.

In this third instalment of our series, Weaver shares some of this thoughts on the work that his him returning to PEARL.

What drew you to this field?
Growing up, I had an unusual childhood hero – NASA’s Dr. Chris McKay. He was featured in TV science documentaries for his work, which involved travelling to extreme environments across the globe (including the Canadian Arctic) seeking to understand whether life might be capable of living on other planets. I found it inspiring. He combined an adventurous spirit and a passion for science. (Below, Weaver photographs an Arctic hare; photo by Debora Griffin.)

The idea was that by studying life which exists on Earth under the most extreme conditions, such as the bottom of the ocean and the Polar Regions, scientists could better understand where else in the universe life could exist. Because of its extremely remote location, working at PEARL demands a sense of adventure, along with a dedication to science – it’s an ideal place to achieve my (very geeky) childhood dream!

This field of research is incredibly satisfying to engage with. On the day-to-day operational level, I enjoy working hands-on with instruments. I love that we take something incredibly simple, and part of our daily life – sunlight – and almost magically turn it into a map of our atmosphere. That’s incredible. I also love that I get to travel to the edge of Canada to try to understand our planet better. (Photo below by Dan Weaver.)

In terms of the “big picture”, the goal of our work is to understand the Earth. We are still developing a complete understanding of how our atmosphere moves and interacts with the rest of the planet. I want to contribute to a field where the knowledge generated relates directly to improving our quality of life. We aim to do that by helping to understand climate change and ozone destruction.

It is important and surprising to see that air pollution reaches the most remote parts of the globe. The results of our work so far have been fascinating, and scary, and necessary.

I work in the Arctic, but this field involves remote places, urban metropolises, and everywhere in between. In the future, I hope to branch out and work with data from other areas of the world as well. I love that we work with satellites. I think it’s amazing that we are able to launch sophisticated instruments into orbit and observe how our planet is changing.

What about the sophisticated instruments you use up north?
PEARL includes a suite of highly specialized instruments we use to collect atmospheric and related data – lidars, spectrometers, photometers, radiometers and more. Each instrument is used to measure something specific.

For example, we use our spectrometers to measure “the history” of the light that’s entered Earth’s atmosphere. We know what the spectrum of sunlight looks like before it enters our atmosphere from satellite measurements. As sunlight passes through our atmosphere, it interacts with gases which absorb specific wavelengths of light. Looking at the spectrum from light reaching our instruments on the ground, we can tell what gases it interacted with in the atmosphere and (to some extent) where those gases were located.

Another type of instrument we use at PEARL are Lidars (pictured at right; photo by Pierre Fogal). They shoot a powerful laser beam into the atmosphere, and use a large telescope to collect light, which is reflected back when it interacts with gases in the atmosphere. We can use this signal to observe clouds, aerosols, and water vapour on a continuous basis, which is valuable data.

For example, it can tell us whether clouds are made up of ice crystals or water droplets.

As home to a variety of instruments – including spectrometers and Lidars – we’re working at PEARL to piece together a more complete picture of our atmosphere and how it’s changing.

One part of the puzzle is climate change, which is a big topic in atmospheric science right now. We measure greenhouse gases, such as CO2, methane, and N2O, and provide the international science community insight into how these gases are changing from a high Arctic perspective.

In fact, PEARL is part of a global network of atmospheric observatories called TCCON (Total Carbon Column Observing Network); we’re its northern-most site worldwide. Climate change is a planet-wide phenomenon. To understand it, we need to measure everywhere, especially the rapidly-changing Arctic, which PEARL is exceptionally well located to do.

Another major research area for us is the ozone layer; we measure stratospheric gases involved in ozone destruction (e.g., CFCs, chlorine-containing molecules). When the first-ever observed ozone hole formed over the Arctic in 2011, this research became especially important. Ozone depletion had occurred regularly in the Arctic but until 2011 ozone holes had only been seen above Antarctica. Our team was at PEARL during this “ozone hole event,” and we were able to take critical measurements using spectrometers and balloon-based instruments, which were then confirmed using satellite data.

The desire to understand whether this type of dramatic event may happen again in the future motivates us to continue our work. That’s why PEARL is part of a global network of observatories called NDACC (the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change), which helps us collaborate internationally, working with scientists around the globe to try to answer questions like, “Why did a hole occur in the ozone layer over the Arctic in spring 2011? Will it happen again? What does that mean for our environment?”

This is the third instalment of our series on Dan Weaver's research in the Arctic. (Read the first instalment of the series; read the second instalment of the series.)

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Reporting from the Arctic: a typical day in Eureka

sgupta — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 10:17:47 +0000

Reporting from the Arctic: a typical day in Eureka sgupta Mon, 03/03/2014 - 05:17

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Carefully turning the truck around in bad weather (photo by Dan Weaver)

Dan Weaver

Author legacy

Dan Weaver

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

Subheadline

Dan Weaver makes you feel better about your commute

Dan Weaver is a graduate student at the University of Toronto whose research takes him to PEARL, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Ellesmere Island, near Eureka, Nunavut.

You can also reach Weaver on Twitter through the @CREATEArcticSci Twitter account.

In this second instalment of our series, Weaver describes what it's like to work in the Arctic.

What does a typical day in Eureka look like for you?
We are in PEARL’s labs 7 days a week during our measurement campaigns, and have long days. But we’re excited about our research and the opportunity to push the boundaries of what we know about the planet.

When we first arrive, there is a flurry of activity to unpack our equipment. Many large instruments are installed at PEARL permanently, but some are brought back and forth. We also need to bring up parts for upgrading, repairing, or maintaining instruments.

(Photo at right by Dan Weaver: Debora Griffin and Paul Loewen unpack a portable spectrometer (PARIS) on day one of the 2013 PEARL campaign.)

The team hits a rhythm after the first week, and some sense of routine settles in. We wake up at about 7 AM, get ready for the day, and eat breakfast at the Eureka Weather Station with our Environment Canada colleagues.

Researchers working at 0PAL (the Zero-altitude PEARL Auxiliary Laboratory) have a short walk to their lab, which is close to the weather station. Those who work at the Ridge Lab drive about 15 kilometers in a large pickup truck every morning and evening. This can be a routine half hour commute along a scenic Arctic road. Or it can be unexpectedly challenging. Only specially trained team members are permitted to drive.

Bad weather can quickly make the desolate Arctic road impassable and dangerous.

The high Arctic is a desert. There can be snowy days during the measurement campaigns, but those are relatively rare. Driving conditions are most often complicated by blowing snow and the large snow drifts they create. We must always be prepared to get stuck. There isn’t regular plow service. If bad weather hits Eureka, the Environment Canada station’s priority is to keep the airport runway clear – for obvious safety reasons. If we need help from them and their heavy vehicles, we may have to wait. (Photo below by Debora Griffin.)

During the first week of my first PEARL campaign a couple years ago, we got stuck in the snow. There was a snow drift ahead on the road, and we thought the truck would plow through it. Waiting for the road to be cleared could take days, and we don’t ask the station for help unless it’s absolutely necessary. The snow drift was deeper and longer than expected, and the truck ended up plowing itself deep into it, but not through.

The truck wouldn’t move in any direction. We carry shovels in the back of the pickup truck for times like these. We all got out, and started shoveling. It took a long time, but eventually the underside of the truck and the wheels were cleared out enough that we could drive back to the Weather Station. The snow-clearing trucks were sent out to restore access to the lab, but for the next couple hours, we had to wait at the station. At least we got some exercise, and had a team building experience!

It is also possible that once we are at the Ridge Lab, weather turns bad and we can’t return to the Eureka Weather Station. In that case, we stay at the lab until weather gets better and the weather station can clear the road. There is a basic kitchen, emergency food supplies, and bunk beds. If something should happen to the lab building itself (we did have an electrical scare one year, which thankfully was more of a warning than a true threat), there is an emergency shelter a short walk down the road. Anyone needing regular medication must keep it on their person at all times, for safety.

In fact, we keep our special Arctic gear (parkas, boots, snow pants, gloves) on us during the flights from Yellowknife to Eureka, just in case of an emergency en route. It can be a bit cumbersome, but we don’t take any chances in such a harsh environment. (Photo below by Dan Weaver shows researchers Joseph Mendonca and Debora Griffin)

The changing sunlight at Eureka is an interesting aspect of our day-to-day life. When we arrive, it is the end of “Polar Night”. There is almost no sunlight. The Arctic has been dark since late-October. One of the scientific reasons we are there at this time of year is to watch the dramatic changes in atmospheric chemistry once sunlight returns. Every day the Sun rises a bit higher and for a bit longer. At first, we only get a tiny bit of light at mid-day, and the Sun moves mostly horizontally along the horizon. With each passing day, we get more and more hours of Sun. We can watch beautiful Arctic sunrises at 11 AM, then 10:45 AM, then 10:30 AM, and so on. After a couple of weeks, the schedule is similar to back home.

After we leave, there are 12 hours of sunlight. And it continues to increase until there are 24-hours of sunlight (in mid-April), and the Sun moves in circles in the sky without ever setting below the horizon.

Once we are all back at the Weather Station at the end of the day, we eat dinner, exchange stories, and hopefully get a couple hours to relax or connect with friends and family back home. Each evening the team pools photos and instrument updates to be assembled into daily briefings for our colleagues and funding partners down south. We update the campaign website’s stories and photo albums. When possible, I update the twitter account and blog. I also enjoy using the recreational room’s ping pong table!

This is the second instalment of our series by Dan Weaver about conducting research in the Arctic. (Read the first instalment.)

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Reporting from the Arctic: measuring ozone, tracking satellites, hiking fiords

sgupta — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:16:08 +0000

Reporting from the Arctic: measuring ozone, tracking satellites, hiking fiords sgupta Thu, 02/27/2014 - 06:16

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Dan Weaver, a PhD student and drummer, will be reporting from the Arctic for the next month (all photos courtesy Dan Weaver)

Dan Weaver

Author legacy

Dan Weaver

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

Subheadline

PhD student Dan Weaver in Eureka

Dan Weaver is a graduate student at the University of Toronto whose research takes him to PEARL, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Ellesmere Island, near Eureka, Nunavut.

This week, Weaver and the other researchers will fly more than a thousand kilometres north to Edmonton where they will catch another flight to Yellowknife (62°N – roughly the same latitude of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut). That’s the half-way point of their trip; from Yellowknife, they’ll charter a plane to Eureka, stopping in Cambridge Bay and Resolute to refuel. (Image at right by Google Maps.)

Weaver will spend the next month conducting research at PEARL – and he’ll be filing weekly dispatches to www.news.utoronto.ca complete with photos.

Do you have a question for Weaver about his research? About what it’s like to live and work where the only visitors are Arctic hares, foxes or polar bears? Email your queries to: uoftnews@utoronto.ca.

You can also reach Weaver on Twitter through the @CREATEArcticSci Twitter account.

Below, Weaver shares some of this thoughts on his return to PEARL.

How do you pack for the Arctic?
It’s important not to forget anything when packing for a trip to a remote high Arctic research outpost. There is no store. No vending machines. There’s food and basic soap. Everything else must be brought. The first time I packed for this trip, I thought of it like a wilderness camping trip (a hobby of mine).

There are two priorities when packing for this trip (aside from anything needed for research): clothes to stay warm and stuff to ensure your happiness. We are away from our friends, family and homes for a while. Often four weeks. The Internet connection is ok, but not always reliable. It’s important to have something to keep yourself emotionally healthy. Books, videos, games, or chocolate are all favourites. If someone expects they will want a beer during their month in the high Arctic, they have to bring it in their luggage!

I’ve dramatically improved my ability to enjoy winter at home by investing in warm clothes for the Arctic. I have good gloves and a scarf. Having a variety of layers is important. I bring fleeces and hoodies. Below -40°C my full mask makes a huge difference to my comfort.

I basically dress like an astronaut. (Photo below by Debora Griffin.)

In terms of entertainment, there is a TV and a Nintendo Wii at the Eureka Weather Station which we can often use. Last year, someone brought the first couple seasons of Game of Thrones. I hadn’t heard of it before, but I returned home a fan. This year I plan to bring Super Mario Kart for my colleagues and I to play when we have downtime. It’s important to get our minds off of work during the limited number of hours we have to ourselves.

Why Eureka?
PEARL’s location is extremely remote, and its environment is difficult to work in. The nearest community, Grise Fiord, is over 500 kilometers away and has only 140 people. It takes us two days to travel from our homes in southern Ontario to Eureka. But there are tremendous advantages to working there. Very few observatories exist in this area of the world, and there are significant scientific questions that can only be answered by taking measurements in the far North.

For example, Eureka is a “sweet-spot” for supporting satellite missions – in particular when it comes to tracking how well a satellite is performing. Once a satellite is launched into orbit, we can’t easily check up on it to see if it’s working as expected. But satellite performance still has to be tracked, and over time satellites do wear out.

One of the ways we can “check in” on a satellite’s performance is to “validate” satellite measurements using ground-based instruments – which we use at PEARL. When satellites pass overhead and measure the atmosphere above a ground-based validation site such as our research lab, the ground-based instruments look up and measure the same atmosphere. If everything is working as expected, both the satellite and the ground-based instruments end up with a consistent result.

These validations are important all over the world. For instance, PEARL measurements help validate the Japanese space agency’s mission that measures greenhouse gases. Even more significantly, PEARL was recently selected as a validation site for NASA’s upcoming OCO-2 mission (Orbiting Carbon Observatory).

But the focus of our satellite work is two sophisticated Canadian satellite missions – ACE and OSIRIS – which pass over Eureka frequently.

ACE, the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment, is a Canadian-designed, built, and operated satellite mission. OSIRIS is a Canadian instrument aboard the Swedish Odin satellite. Both measure the Earth’s atmosphere from space, and are validated by measurements taken at PEARL. It’s one of the primary reasons we've had measurement campaigns during late February and March every year since 2004. (Photo at right from 2012 measurement campaign by Xiaoyi Zhao.)

Through our validation work we can proudly say that Canada’s ACE and OSIRIS missions have been incredibly successful, and continue to provide Canadian scientists with global datasets. In fact, ACE celebrated 10 years of collecting scientific data just recently: on February 21, 2014. The ACE mission is a remarkable Canadian science success story.

And beyond checking up on satellites?
In 2010 there were massive fires in Russia, near Moscow. The smoke from those fires travelled vast distances across the polar region, and was measured at PEARL. It took a week for the smoke to reach the high Arctic, but it then remained in the area for months because it was caught in an atmospheric circulation pattern.

This wasn’t a unique case. At least 10 times between 2008 and 2012, large fires released pollutants that reached the high Arctic from across North America and Russia. It is a spectacular example of our planet’s interconnectedness. Pollutants produced down south can be transported to the most remote regions of the planet.

As our planet changes due to climate change, these types of events may occur more frequently. Their impact on the Arctic is uncertain, and requires more research, more observations, and more people working in places like PEARL (pictured at right in photo by Dan Weaver.

Eureka is valuable for more than just atmospheric research. Astronomers have been testing conditions for a potential new Canadian telescope, likely to be located next to PEARL.

Atmospheric conditions appear excellent for astronomy – some of the best in the world. There is nearly no light pollution, low water vapour, minimal pollution generally, and the sky is often cloud-free. It is also dark for months at a time, which carries significant advantages.

Biologists also frequently visit Eureka because there is a surprising diversity of wildlife and plants nearby. It is known as the “Garden spot of the Arctic.” Even during winter trips to PEARL, our team sees Arctic hares, wolves, muskoxen, and foxes.

Watch www.news.utoronto.ca for the next instalment of Reporting from the Arctic, when Weaver explains how scientists handle a snowy commute where there are no plows.

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