Work's been fairly uneventful for the past few days. Zuguang, my supervisor in Trude's absence, is in the south of France on a conference this week, along with all the scientists at Alomar, and he's having Barbara, an engineer who works with the tropospheric lidar, introduce me to how it works. So I've been reading up on the instrument, and writing Matlab routines to process the raw lidar data in order to get a scientifically meaningful result. This feels more like an exercise than actual work because they already have routines for doing this. On the other hand, I'll have something that I know works on my computer (I only have Matlab, not Labview, a more specialized software for Lidar that is sometimes used by this lab), I'll also have a more thorough understanding of the data processing algorithms, and it'll be interesting to compare my code with Zuguang's once he gets back.
No actual new data has been taken at Alomar since May 3--long before I got to Norway. Using their big, expensive lidar systems requires good weather--no rain or snow, which could fall through the hatch and damage the instruments (they're not "waterproof", like Trude's instrument was supposed to be) and no low, thick clouds which would absorb all the laser light and make the measurements useless (since they're mainly interested in the upper atmosphere)--and it's been cloudy and sometimes raining most of the time I've been there. The only clear times have been at "night" and on weekends, when they normally don't take measurements anyway. This week, though, they might make an exception because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland which they want to study (which, incidentally, would've really screwed up my travel plans had I come a week later, since I had a connection in Keflavik airport which was closed). So someone has to be there at all hours of the day, waiting for any opportunity where the weather clears up long enough tomake an observation. I won't be doing it myself because I'm not trained to operate the system yet, but this might produce some interesting data for me to look at.
I've managed to adjust the seat on the Rocket Range's bike and get used to riding it, so I've been able to go into downtown Andenes by myself. It's a long trip, about 5 miles round trip, but it's the only way to get to an ATM, or grocery store (which is a little closer), and there's a bike path most of the way so it's not too nervewracking as far as dealing with traffic. The strong winds mean I have to work harder to go the same speed, but it's a really scenic ride.
Andenes is small town, about 2,900 inhabitants. That's more than half of the 5,600 people on the island of Andoya, which is 35 miles long and varies from 3-9 miles wide. So that should give you an idea of how sparsely populated this place is. I was thinking of visiting Tromso, the nearest relatively large city with a population of 68,000, over a weekend, but the only ways to get there are by flying or using a combination of a ferry and a bus, and it would cost a lot to stay overnight since hotels, like everything else, are expensive and there's no youth hostels in the city. So the only accessible areas to me are Andenes, Bleik (a village the same distance away as Andenes, in the opposite direction), and maybe Sortland (a larger town on a different island, about an hour away by bus). Still, Andenes is pretty compact and it's got everything I think I'll need for the next 7 weeks.
There's only a few other people staying in the "hotel" at the Rocket Range. One is Arve, a Norwegian engineering student who's just finishing up his master's thesis regarding unmanned airplanes, and who needs the facilities at the rocket range in order to fly them. He's been really helpful to me as far as figuring out how things work, since I can't read the directions for the washing machine, for example, when they're in Norwegian. There's also two Australian scientists working on a big radar array at the rocket range. And sometimes the other scientists, who have their own homes in Andenes, come to the range's dining area to work on nights and weekends when they need to get away from distractions such as their spouses. I really like the international nature of this operation, as it's made for a lot of interesting conversations about the politics, academic systems, etc. of our various countries.
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