PALMER STATION SCIENCE SITREP June 2002 NEWS FROM THE LAB Cherie M. Wilson, Winter Assistant Supervisor, Laboratory Operations With demolition activities largely completed, the work of rebuilding the biolab's infrastructure was the construction focus for the month. This included the installation of new subfloors, electrical conduit, lines and panels, plumbing, sprinkler systems, boiler, hot water heater, ductwork and air handlers. Walls were framed, some were insulated and drywalled and new doors were hung. The installation of partitions, doors, and stairwell drywall translated to a significant reduction in fire hazard for the station. The midwinter celebration brought a much-needed additional day of rest for station personnel, who celebrated with a festive dinner, slide show, and congratulations from fellow stations in Antarctica and well as from President Bush. Occasional storms brought out the juvenile Giant Petrels and Kelp Gulls, who seemed to enjoy the higher winds. Birds sighted during the month included juvenile Giant Petrels, Snow Petrels, Cormorants, Storm Petrels, Snowy Sheathbills, and Kelp Gulls. A seal that appeared to be a leopard was seen cruising Hero Inlet on several occasions. On the 17th of the month, hundreds of Cormorants were sighted, flying in lines like geese along the coast toward the northwest. This month, we experienced both beautiful days with clear, starry nights and snow storms with high winds up to 63 knots that dumped most of the snow on the lower decks around the aquarium. Temperatures ranged from 2.6 degrees C above zero down to -17.5 degrees C, with an average of –8.7 degrees C. Brash ice, pancake ice and bergs of every shape and size regularly blew in and out of Arthur Harbor. The following projects conducted research at Palmer Station this month: AO-106-P: GLOBAL THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE RADIATION BELTS AND THE LOWER IONOSPHERE Umran Inan, Principal Investigator, Stanford University. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. The Stanford equipment receives and records Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio waves in order to study natural ionospheric and magnetospheric phenomena, as well as to study the distribution of the lightning strokes that are a principle source of natural VLF signals. The broadband data viewing software was copied from the BBS computer to the BBC computer, and after a few modifications to various directory entries within the scripts and the MATLAB default settings, it was run successfully. Data can now be viewed on all VLF computers. Late in the month, difficulties were encountered in ftping files directly to Stanford from Palmer Station computers. To keep the daily quality control images flowing, a computer in the US was used as an intermediary. GO-052-P: GPS CONTINUOUSLY OPERATING REFERENCE STATION Jerry Mullins, Principal Investigator, U.S. Geological Survey. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Throughout the month, 15 second epoch GPS transmissions were collected continually at station PALM. Each day, the previous day’s data file was examined for completeness, compressed, and transmitted to the USGS in Reston, VA. Less than ten minutes of data were lost while the acquisition computer was rebooting to accept a new IP configuration. GO-090-P: GLOBAL SEISMOGRAPH NETWORK (GSN) SITE AT PALMER STATION Rhett Butler, Principal Investigator, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS). The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Station PMSA is one of more than 130 sites in the GSN, monitoring seismic waves produced by events worldwide. Data files are recorded to tape and also sent to the USGS in near real time, as the local Internet connection allows. On 14 June, the DP computer appeared to spontaneously reboot, but it turned out to have been reset remotely by the grantees in order to restart the automatic data transfer process. The vault was visited on 18 June, after the Z mass began to move upward more rapidly than expected. The vacuum in the Z bell jar was a little weak, but not enough to account for the upward drift, and no other obvious cause was discovered. As the mass has made fairly dramatic and ultimately unexplained moves in the past, it was decided just to monitor it in the hopes that it would, with no outside intervention, reach a position with which it's comfortable. Although the mass continued to drift for a few days after the visit, it did eventually stabilize. During the vault visit, vacuums in all bell jars were reasserted, and the batteries were tested. One battery was found to be in poor condition, and given the age of both batteries, two replacements have been requested from ASL. OO-204-O: A STUDY OF ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN VARIABILITY IN RELATION TO ANNUAL TO DECADAL VARIATIONS IN TERRESTRIAL AND MARINE ECOSYSTEMS Ralph Keeling, Principal Investigator, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Air samples are collected on a semi-weekly basis by the station physician. The goal of this project is to resolve seasonal and interannual variations in atmospheric O2 (detected through changes in O2/N2 ratio), which can aid in determining rates of marine biological productivity and ocean mixing. The results are also used to help determine the terrestrial and oceanic distribution of the global anthropogenic CO2 sink. The program involves air sampling at a network of sites in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Palmer Station is especially well situated for resolving signals of carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean. Samples taken from the station are return-shipped to Scripps where the analysis of O2 and CO2 content takes place. OO-264-O: COLLECTION OF ATMOSPHERIC AIR FOR THE NOAA\CMDL WORLDWIDE FLASK SAMPLING NETWORK David Hofmann, Principal Investigator, Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Air samples are collected on a weekly basis by the station physician. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory team continues its long-term measurements of carbon dioxide and other climate-relevant atmospheric gases. The Palmer Station air samples are returned to the NOAA laboratory for analysis as part of NOAA's effort to determine and assess the long-term buildup of global pollutants in the atmosphere. Data from this experiment will be used in modeling studies to determine how the rate of change of these parameters affects climate. OO-275-O: DOE-EML REMOTE ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENTS PROGRAM (RAMP) Colin Sanderson, Principal Investigator, Department of Energy, Environmental Measurements Laboratory. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. The RAMP system is part of a global network seeking to characterize the quantity and distribution of radionuclide particles occurring both naturally and artificially in the atmosphere. One sample filter was exposed for the duration of each week, and a weekly schedule of calibration, background, and sample counts was maintained. OO-283-P: ANTARCTIC AUTOMATIC WEATHER STATIONS (AWS) Charles Stearns, Principal Investigator, University of Wisconsin. The Science Technician monitors data transmissions for the project. AWS transmissions from Bonaparte Point, Hugo Island, and RACER Rock were monitored using the TeraScan system. Another diagnostic visit was paid to the Bonaparte Point unit on 01 June, for further investigation of its failure to report a wind speed. The failure was traced to a loose solder joint, which was bypassed using a small jumper wire, restoring proper operation. On 11 June, the station’s electronics box was coaxed from its tower, brought back to Palmer, expeditiously repaired, and then remounted. Able assistance in this endeavor was provided by the Maintenance Specialist, the Waste Specialist, and the Communications Technician. TO-312-O: TERASCAN SATELLITE IMAGING SYSTEM Dan Lubin, Principal Investigator, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Throughout the month, the TeraScan system collected, archived, and processed DMSP and NOAA satellite telemetry, maintaining a schedule of 20-25 passes per day. Difficulties were encountered in installing OGP software for SeaWiFS telemetry decryption. After the proper computer information was provided to Orbital Imaging, their piece of the software was successfully installed and licensed, but repeated problems were encountered with the SeaSpace portion of the software, and efforts continue. Direct access from Palmer Station computers to the orbital elements posted daily on a SeaSpace ftp server was lost; as with VLF file transfers, a computer in the US was used as an intermediary to keep the elements updated. Two infrared images of the Marguerite Bay region and five of the western Antarctic peninsula pack ice were provided to the POC of the GLOBEC cruise in support of cruise planning. An 85GHz SSM/I ice concentration image was produced and transferred to UCSB for BP-032-P (Smith) on a weekly basis. TO-513-O: ULTRAVIOLET SPECTRORADIOMETER NETWORK Charles Booth, Principal Investigator, Biospherical Instruments, Inc. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. The BSI UV monitor produces full sky irradiance spectra ranging from the atmospheric UV cutoff near 290nm up to 605nm, four times per hour, while the sun is above the horizon. Limited preliminary results are available on-site in near real time, while fully calibrated data sets are made available by BSI on a periodic basis. Absolute Scans were performed on 04 and 19 June. Preliminary UV data files for the month of May were provided to Chris Hewes of UCSD. Preliminary UV data files were archived on a daily basis for BP-016-P (Vernet). TIDE GAGE Tony Amos, Point of Contact, The University of Texas Marine Science Institute. The Science Technician operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Tide height, sea water temperature and salinity are monitored on a continual basis by a gage mounted at the Palmer Station pier. Data collection was switched from a network drive to the local hard drive for the roughly six hours of a planned network interruption on 06 June. SYNOPTIC WEATHER OBSERVATIONS Each day, three synoptic weather observations were performed, coded, and sent to Rothera Station via HF radio. Continuing the retroactive QA/QC of the weather records, observations from November and December 2000 were checked and corrections were made wherever necessary and possible. A review, made necessarily more cursory by the lack of original observation sheets for much of the period, was also conducted of the remainder of the weather database, spanning April 1989 October 2000. A number of erroneous data values were corrected and others were removed.