16. July 2003
GAWTEC station support
GAWTEC, the GAW Training and Education Center in Germany, which gives training courses for scientists and technicians from worldwide GAW stations twice a year, also assists - on request and to limited extent - GAW personnel in solving technical problems at their stations by sending experts from GAWTEC cooperation partners. In 2002 such assistance was provided to the Air Chemistry Lab at the Federal Hydrometeorological Institute in Belgrade.
In 2003 support was granted to the Global Station Ushuaia in Argentina on request from the GAW Regional Calibration Centre (RCC) for Surface Ozone at Buenos Aires. For best use of GAWTEC's financial ressources the technical visit to Ushuaia was combined with training courses on Surface Ozone at the RCC (attended also by staff from GAW stations in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) and the GAW Regional Station La Quiaca. Technical advice and training were given by Dr. Stefan Gilge, German Meteorological Service, Meteorological Observatory and GAW Global Station, Platform Hohenpeissenberg.
The training courses included lectures on measurement techniques for surface ozone (with focus on the UV absorption method), an introduction into the chemical reaction cycles of tropospheric ozone formation, relevant features concerning design of inlet lines, calibration procedures, maintenance, data flow, data acquisition, data handling and QA/QC procedures. The practical part dealt with preventive maintenance, recognition of malfunctions, especially with the help of the analyzer's readout, trouble shooting and instrument repair. Special emphasis was put on calibration procedures and archiving zero and span factors by calibration.
At la Quiaca (3500 m a.s.l.) dust is a major problem for the analyzers. Training lessons there especially focussed on inlet line, filter and preventive maintenance. Together with the staff, a new location was found within the area of the observatory for future ground level ozone measurements replacing the old site, which often was affected by a nearby bus station.
The training lessons took place in a friendly, constructive and professional atmosphere. All trainees were very dedicated to their work. The so-called "Standard Operating Procedures" used by the participants up to then had been relatively fragmentary and gave no explanations in case of an unusual performance of the analyzers. The participants will now be in a position to recognize and rate any "deviation from normal" and to repair the analyzers by themselves, if necessary.