PALMER STATION SCIENCE SITREP JANUARY 2000 William R. Fraser, SSL NEWS FROM THE LAB Rob Edwards, Supervisor, Laboratory Operations The New Year was ushered in with an appropriate splash at Palmer Station, and the R/V LAURENCE M. GOULD arrived to start the annual Palmer Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project summer research cruise shortly thereafter. Although many researchers left station for the cruise, their beds were filled with additional researchers from BO-200-O (Jeffrey), BO-279-O (Ricchiazzi), and TO-369-O (Wilson), along with media events VP-014-O and VP-015-O, a Teacher Experiencing Antarctica (TEA), and Dr. Polly Penhale as NSF representative. This totaled up to 17 non-support staff for most of the month. Descriptions of their activities will be found below, along with all the longer term projects. After a successful cruise, the LMG returned to station at the end of the month, and when it departed northward nine LTER researchers were left on station along with a full support staff. Palmer Station facilities continue to be upgraded as the various remodeling projects progress. The most visible improvement for researchers was the field gear addition to the Boathouse, which became functional this month. Shelves were installed in one of the grantee milvans to provide better organization and more efficient storage. Finish details continued in the GWR stair tower and first floor, as well as the exterior painting and general cleanup around station which can occur with the warmer summer weather. An ad hoc meeting of the Palmer Area User Committee (PAUC) was held on station, and included all grantees on station, the NSF Representative, the Station Manager, as well as representatives from different ASA departments. Updates were provided on issues from the Annual PAUC meeting. Discussion then centered on a few particular topics: need for general field assistants, USAP supplied field gear, weather data, future plans for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty site, and remodeling plans for the laboratories and aquarium. A sidebar meeting was held on weather instrumentation and data requirements. Notes from the meeting will be made available to Dr. Tad Day, PAUC chair, who can be contacted at tadday@asu.edu. January was a very busy month for visitors to Palmer Station, with five tour ships and several yachts arriving for visits. Despite the lack of early season diving, the Lab staff set up and maintained a display aquarium, using organisms collected in bottom and mid-water trawls, in conjunction with the activities of BP-028-O (Ross/Quetin). Support staff were kept busy providing lectures, acting as tour guides and interpreters for the display tank. As an added bonus, the visiting groups included relatives, friends, and acquaintances of a number of Palmer residents. The Antarctic summer has truly arrived, with an average temperature of 1.7 C and a high of almost seven and one half degrees. We had slightly more sun (five clear or partly cloudy days), and slightly less precipitation (54mm) than last month. Boating access has been good with only limited brash ice in the local area. Wind and ocean swell, however, have significantly limited boating for about one third of the days this month. The glacier faces have been actively calving, with more shoreline being exposed each year. The summer wildlife season is in full swing, with rapidly growing penguin chicks, lots of seabird activity, dozens of leopard seals cruising the shorelines, and feeding Humpback and Minke whales. The elephant seals are impossible to miss as they come and go on weekly foraging trips, and fur seals are starting to appear on some of the islands. ------------------ The following projects conducted research at Palmer Station: BP-013-O LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH (LTER) ON THE ANTARCTIC MARINE ECOSYSTEM: AN ICE-DOMINATED ENVIRONMENT (SEABIRD COMPONENT). William R. Fraser, Principal Investigator, Biology Department, Montana State University. Personnel on station: William R. Fraser, Erik Chapman, Donna Patterson. Continued good access to our island study sites during January has allowed us to maintain the timely aquisition of the LTER Seabird Component core data. On 9 January we initiated Adelie Penguin diet sampling and deployed 25 radio transmitters to begin collecting data on the duration of foraging trips, an index of krill vailability. These studies will continue into the month of February. On 24 January, coincident with creching of the last remaining chicks, we ended studies on breeding biology initiated in early October. A variety of area-wide censuses related to breeding chronology and chick production were also completed by the end of the month. As in past seasons, we have continued the aquisition of basic data on the demography, breeding biology and foraging ecology of Giant Petrels, Kelp Gulls, Blue-eyed Shags and Brown and South Polar Skuas. These data add to several species-specific time series that began in the mid-1970s. BP-016-0 LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH (LTER) ON THE ANTARCTIC MARINE ECOSYSTEM: AN ICE-DOMINATED ENVIRONMENT (PHYTOPLANKTON COMPONENT). Maria Vernet, Principal Investigator, Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Personnel have reported their activities as part of the Lawrence M. Gould's annual LTER cruise. BP-028-0 LONG-TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH (LTER) ON THE ANTARCTIC MARINE ECOSYSTEM: AN ICE-DOMINATED SYSTEM (PREY COMPONENT). Robin M. Ross and Langdon B.Quetin, Principal Investigators, Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara. Personnel have reported their activities as part of the Lawrence M. Gould's annual LTER cruise. BP-032-O LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH (LTER) ON THE ANTARCTIC MARINE ECOSYSTEM: AN ICE-DOMINATED ENVIRONMENT (OPTICS COMPONENT). Raymond C. Smith, Principal Investigator, ICESS, University of California at Santa Barbara. Personnel have reported their activities as part of the Lawrence M. Gould's annual LTER cruise. BO-200-O BACTERIOPLANKTON IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN. II. PHOTOCHEMICAL AND TROPHIC INTERACTIONS AND SEASONAL PATTERNS OF UV RESPONSE. Wade H. Jeffrey, Principal Investigator, University of West Florida. Personnel on Station: J. Dean Pakulski, Jarah Meador, Karen McCrery We are rapidly closing out our long field season at Palmer Station. During January we continued our series of diel and day-long UV exposure experiments completing 3 each for the month. We also conducted 8 UV exposure experiments using the solar simulator from water collected from LTER stations B and E. In addition to our weekly diel experiments, Karen McCrery also conducted 6 diel experiments examining transcription of bacterial RNA during exposure to sunlight. Jarah Meador also collected ice samples from the glacier rappelling into a crevasse to obtain the material. She will use these to examine nucleotide excision repair (NER) and photoenzymatic (PER) capabilities of the bacteria isolated from the ice. It's been a very productive season for us this year. I would like to thank all the ASA support people for all the help they gave us. They are the most amazingly talented group of people I've ever had a the pleasure to work with and I wish them the best of luck in the future. I would also like to thank Bob Farrell for being THE best station manager and Polly Penhale for being THE best NSF rep. Thanks again to all. BO-279-O SURFACE UV IRRADIANCE AND PAR VARIABILITY OVER ANTARCTICA. Paul Ricchiazzi, UCSB, Principal Investigator, Catherine Gautier, UCSB, Co-Principal Investigator, Dan Lubin, SIO, Co-Principal Investigator. Personnel on station: Dan Lubin. During January 2000, this project accomplished its final major objective by completing the island radiometer experiment. Nine zodiac trips were made to Outcast and Janus Islands, to install recharged batteries, service the GUV radiometer installations, and periodically backup the data. The result has been a total of 18-20 days of data from each island radiometer. The GUV radiometer at T-5 functioned continuously throughout January until being dismantled on January 24. Due to the long daylight hours, approximately 80% of the data from all three instruments are expected to have a usefully high signal-to-noise ratio. Some absolute calibration irregularities were noticed with these radiometers, and this issue needs to be clarified by Biospherical by means of a thorough post-season laboratory calibration immediately after the instruments return to the U.S. The success of this experiment depends on the ability of this network of radiometers to detect spatial gradients in UV and PAR irradiance of between 5-20%. An intercomparison of all three instruments, performed at T-5 on January 24, should help with this issue, but the absolute calibration for the three instruments needs to be determined. The lab manager, boating coordinator, and entire ASA staff at Palmer Station deserve commendation for the support given to this experiment. The static island deployments, involving large zodiac crews (no fewer than four people) to transport batteries and other relatively heavy equipment, were not called for in this project's original SIP. The flexibility of Palmer Station personnel allowed for essentially uninterrupted data collection. Data collection from the other two radiometers at T-5, the Yankee Environmental Systems MFRSR and Biospherical Instruments GIR, continued throughout January. The infrared channels on the GIR had failed during late December, but prior to that the GIR did provide 2.5 months worth of data for possible analysis of cloud droplet size and phase. Two tethered balloon flights, for aerial photography, were carried out on January 11 and January 19, on which days the payload ascended to approximately 2800' and 4500', respectively. Nearly all of this research group's equipment has been packed and will leave the station on January 28. The exceptions are: (1) a cooler (instrument housing) that had to be left on Janus Island due to bad weather, and (2) ten marine gel-cell batteries with two of their chargers. With NSF's permission, it was decided that the batteries (purchased out of the grant) were not cost-effective to return to the PIs' home institutions, and might be more valuable for future work at Palmer Station. The cooler may be recovered from Janus Island and returned to Scripps Institution of Oceanography during the next 3-4 months, at the station's convenience. TO-396-O. CTBT INFRASONIC ARRAY SITE SURVEY AT PALMER STATION, ANTARCTICA. Charles R. Wilson, Principal Investigator. Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska. Personnel on station: Charles R. Wilson, Daniel L. Osborne and Kathleen M. Lawson. The purpose of this project was to make a Site Survey of the atmospheric micro-pressure background at Palmer Station in order to determine whether or not this would be a suitable location for an infrasonic microphone array. This site survey was made on behalf of the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Band Treaty. Simultaneous measurements of the atmospheric micro-pressure were made, over a period of ten days in January 2000, using an array of four infrasonic microphones located at: (1) Palmer Station, (2) Torgersen Island, (3) Janus Island, and (4) Old Palmer Station. Measurements of wind speed and direction were also made at sites 1,2 and 4. The pressure field and the wind parameters were sampled at twenty times a second and recorded digitally at each site. Time synchronization of the data was implemented by the use of GPS clocks at each microphone location. Each site was visited every few days, as the weather permitted, in order to download data and change batteries. Analysis of the down loaded data were made back at Palmer station to insure data continuity and to identify any coherent infrasonic wave signals that might be present. Infrasonic waves, that are coherent across the microphone array, were found almost daily, from calving events of icebergs from the local ice cliffs in Arthur Harbour. The presence of five seconds period Microbaroms, from marine storms, was identified in the data from all four sites using Power Spectral Density analysis. The coordinates of the four microphone sites are given below. Palmer Array sensor coordinates for January 2000 survey Base station location: Latitude: 64deg 46min 30.3272sec South Longitude: 64d 03m 04.04752s West Elevation: 31.13 meters ellipsoidal height Elevation above mean sea level: 16.29 m. Palmer Microphone: [ 0.1520km E 0.1560 km N] elevation: 17.50m, m.s.l. Lat: 64 46 25.2888, Long: 64 02 52.4851 Torgersen Microphone: [ - 1.0896 km E 0.2060 km N ] elevation: 8.67m, m.s.l. Lat: 64 46 23.6562, Long: 64 04 26.5000 Janus Island Microphone: [ - 2.3031 km E - 0.9380 km N ] elevation: 11.50m, m.s.l. Lat: 64 47 00.612 , Long: 64 05 58.385 Old Palmer (Brit) Microphone: [ -1.2194 km E 1.2857 km N] elevation: 17.37m, m.s.l. Lat: 64 45 48.8107, Long: 64 04 36.2879 -------------------------- The following projects were part of the artists, media, writers and TEA programs: VP-014. Charles Petit and Jim LoScalzo, USNews & World Report. We had a successful visit to Palmer Station January 8-28, 2000, during which time every person working there as well as the weather cooperated. We had free access to the research underway and fully shared the general rhythm of life on station. Our assignment's primary, broad purpose was to illustrate the station's work, the setting, and how landscape and wildlife respond to a warming climate. Ready use of the zodiac boats, as well as universal welcome by field teams, put us on nearly all the local islands. We also took part in an expedition up the glacier to obtain microbiology samples from a crevasse. We spent a particular amount of time with the LTER bird group led by William Fraser. He, Donna Patterson, and Eric Chapman fully demonstrated how they monitor adelies and other penguins, cormorants, giant petrels, skuas, and other seabirds. For a few other examples, Dean Pakulski and Jarah Meador helped us see how they track microbial life here, Charles "Buck" Wilson and his group explained clearly the CTBT infrasonics project, and Dan Lubin shared with us his study of solar irradiance and UV model testing. ASA personnel answered every question on how they keep the station running, and in a particular service, designated a room in the GWR as our exclusive work space. The regular science lectures were particularly useful as general overviews of the station's primary work. In addition to the researchers mentioned above, we are grateful to NSF rep. Polly Penhale and to station employees including manager Bob Farrell, lab supervisors Ken Doggett and Rob Edwards, physical sciences tech. John Booth, and boating and SAR team leader Ross Hein, for their help. The assignment would have benefitted from a visit to Biscoe Point and its gentoo population, but this was forbidden by regulations minimizing human interference. Weather may have ruled out such a visit under any circumstance, but station management should have the discretion to allow some, well-supervised media visits to such areas. In addition to the courtesies we found at Palmer, crew and researchers aboard the L.M.Gould provided us every assistance. VP-015. Gary Braash, writer and photographer. While on assignment for International Wildlife magazine (National Wildlife Federation, www.nwf.org), I enjoyed the hospitality of Palmer Station from 6 January to 27 January 2000. Visiting NSF Science Program Manager Dr. Polly Penhale, Station Manager Bob Farrell, and Chief Scientist Dr. Bill Fraser extended all possible cooperation. I was particularly aided by Boating manager Ross Hein, Lab Managers Ken Doggett and Rob Edwards, Station Physician Dr. Will Silva , Science Technician John Booth, and Giant Petrel researcher Donna Patterson. Everyone else also was extremely friendly and helpful. I was able to reach all my objectives and more. I expect to submit my first article to International Wildlife immediately, and also to use some of the photographs from Palmer Station in an exhibit about polar climate change to open in Washington DC in April (details to be provided to NSF later). Thanks also to the personnel aboard the LM Gould and to OPP Media Officer Peter West. TEA. Mimi Wallace, TEA (Teachers Experiencing Antarctica). As the resident TEA participant at Palmer Station, from 07-28Jan00, I have been involved in several aspects of station life. I had multiple goals upon arrival at Palmer Station. They were to: -Create an online research-data project. -Test the accuracy of solid standard on station fluorometers. -Keep a daily online journal at the TEA web site to document station life, activities and science. -Correspond with school children via email. -Collect and catalog artifacts for TEA "ice chest." -Conduct student designed experiments. -Take a series of panoramics of various islands and Palmer Station. -Photodocument the weather station at Palmer. There was particular success with the online research-data project. The premise of the project was to collaborate with Bill Fraser and his team, Donna Patterson and Erik Chapman. We selected 7 penguins that were fitted with radio transmitters to detect their presence at the colony. The assumption being that if the penguin is not picked up by the receiver, it must be out foraging for food. This information was collected by a data logger and downloaded approximately every 7 days. In addition to the weekly data set, digital pictures of the 7 individual birds along with it's gender, number of chicks, and weight were sent to classrooms. I also sent an aerial view of Humble Island noting the position of the bird's nests. I was able to recruit 4 schools; 3 in Texas and 1 in California, to participate in the project. I estimate that close to 500 students were involved in the "Adopt a Penguin." project. I also kept a daily journal on the TEA web site. I wrote about the science being conducted in this area, human interest stories, and descriptions of station life. During the course of my stay, I corresponded with many school children and answered questions about the life on station, the environment, wildlife, and science research. Several interesting artifacts were collected that will become part of a traveling "ice chest" to be share with interested schools. These include primarily: penguin skeletons, bird eggs, rocks, and shells. I also conducted student designed experiments on sea water quality surrounding Palmer Station, and sound wave behavior in an Antarctic environment. Three virtual tour panoramics of Cormorant , Torgersen and Humble Islands respectively, has been completed. I am in the process of interfacing it with birds sounds recorded by Doug Quin, also at Palmer Station. These panoramics will be mounted on a Montwood High School web site. WO-004-O. Doug Quin and Steve Dunbar, Antarctica 2000. Since Steve Dunbar and I arrived at Palmer Station, we have been busy making sound recordings and broadcasting a series of radio programs from our "production studio" in the Bio Lab. The Antarctica 2000 website was launched in the first week of December (from aboard the Gould) and has received more than 130,000 hits. The URL is: www.antarctica200.net. The site includes daily journal entries, science reports, MP3 audio clips and a photo gallery. We have been successful in making high quality, digital audio recordings of a wide variety of fauna and other sounds including, elephant seals, leopard seals, Adelie penguins, skuas, blue-eyed shags, Antarctic terns, wind, glacier and iceberg calving, etc. The following list is a summary of the radio broadcasts to date, and a few planned for the coming week: December 18, 1999. The NICC (New International Cultural Center), Antwerp, Belgium. Live telephone interview from Palmer Station for the exhibition, "LES OCCASIONS DU TRAVAIL", Legend, Myth, Magic, Evidences/Anachronismes, Tafels en Stoelen, Occasions and Conditions in the Image and Work of the Artist (December 2, 1999- February 19, 2000). December 31, 1999 (Time: Between 11:30am and 12:00pm). VRT - Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep (Flemish Radio and Television), Radio-3: Het Pak van Sjaalman, with host Bart Stouten. A live report from Palmer Station. December 31, 1999 (Time: Between 6-7pm EST). National Public Radio, USA: All Things Considered. A report from Palmer Station. January 1, 2000 (Time: 11:00pm). Akustische Kunst, "The Millennium...Live from Antarctica!" A live soundscape/sound art broadcast from Palmer Station. January 2, 2000 (Time: 2:05pm). Radio New Zealand. A soundscape report from Palmer Station. January 7, 2000 (Time: TBA). The City Radio, Wake Up and Smell the Moon, with host Ed and CG. A live telephone/Internet interview from Palmer Station. In addition, the Antarctica 2000 project was featured in a series of daily television news broadcasts in Santa Barbara on KEYT called, "Great News!", during the week before Christmas and a front page feature article was written for the Santa Rosa NY Times affiliate, The Press- Democrat on December 29,1999. Other press included a feature for a Cologne, West Germany newspaper, in their Arts section. In January we continued making sound recordings in the Palmer Station area. -------------------------- Other research projects. GO-052-O GPS CONTINUOUS OPERATION REFERENCE STATION. J. Mullins, U.S. Geological Survey. The station science technician has monitored the system. During the month, GPS transmissions were collected continuously, converted daily to a RInEx format, compressed, and transmitted to the US Geological Survey in Reston, VA. Following the installation of GBSS and the Y2K rollover, significant modifications were made to several batch files to allow for a streamlined data processing, quality assessment, and file transfer routine at the end of each day. Roving Z-12 surveys were made of the glacier terminus and the VLF cable run in a continuing effort to characterize the seasonal melting of the glacier. A field team member of TO-396-O was given instructions and assistance in using the Z-12 rover in real time differential mode to determine high quality single point positions. Discussions were held with members of BP-013-O regarding the need to survey photo-identifiable points on several of the nearby islands. Examination of the digitized photographs was begun, in an attempt to locate candidate surveying areas from which specific points can be chosen in the field. An initial reconnaissance trip to Cormorant and Christine Islands raised several questions about the criteria for selecting photo-id points, and these questions were posed to the USGS for clarification. GO-091-O GLOBAL SEISMOGRAPH STATION AT PALMER STATION. R. Butler, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS). The station science technician has operated the system. Global seismic events were recorded throughout the month. In the process of a routine write-to-tape operation, the data tape was mangled by the drive. The system software automatically detected the error and rewrote the relevant data on the second tape drive. AO-106-O STUDIES OF LIGHTNING-INDUCED ELECTRON PRECIPITATION OF THE IONOSPHERE. U. Inan, Stanford University. The station science technician has operated the system. The Stanford receiver records very low frequency (VLF) radio waves for studying ionospheric and magnetospheric natural phenomena. Following the Y2K rollover, a minor change was made to a MATLAB script to allow the displaying of data for the next ten years. Glacier melting early in the month placed the posts holding the lower half of the cable run in imminent danger of falling over, so the cable was detached from these posts, the posts were pushed over, and the cable was laid on top of them. After not working for nearly two months, and without any (recent) intervention, the GOES clock suddenly began to display proper time again. This allowed the HAARP narrowband system to be brought back into operation. OO-204-O MEASUREMENTS OF ATMOSPHERIC O2 IN RELATION TO THE GLOBAL CARBON CYCLE. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Air samples are collected on a semi-weekly basis by the station physician. The samples are return shipped to Scripps for analysis of O2 and CO2 content. The goal of the program is to resolve seasonal and interannual variations in atmospheric O2 (detected through changes in O2/N2 ratio) which can aid in the determination of rates of marine biological productivity and ocean mixing and aid in the separation of the global sink for anthropogenic CO2 into terrestrial and oceanic components. The program involves air sampling at a network of sites in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Palmer Station is especially well situated to resolve signals due to carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean. OO-254-O CHLORINE-AND BROMINE-CONTAINING TRACE GASES IN ANTARCTICA. R.A. Rasmussen, Oregon Graduate Institute for Science and Technology. Air samples are taken on a weekly basis by the station physician. The samples are returned to the Institute for analysis of a number of trace components, especially chlorine- and bromine-containing gases. These elements have been implicated in the chemical processes that contribute to the austral-spring depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica. This work will contribute to a better understanding of the buildup of trace constituents, particularly those of high-latitude marine origin. OO-264-O COLLECTION OF ATMOSPHERIC AIR FOR THE NOAA\CMDL WORLDWIDE FLASK SAMPLING NETWORK. James T. Peterson, Environmental Research Laboratories, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Air samples are taken on a weekly basis by the station physician. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory team continue long-term measurements of trace atmospheric constituents that influence climate. The Palmer Station air samples are returned to the NOAA laboratory for analysis of trace constituents, including carbon dioxide. These measurements are part of NOAA's effort to determine and assess the long-term buildup of global pollutants in the atmosphere. This data will be used to determine how the rate of change of these parameters affects climate, particularly by including them in climate model studies. OO-275-O DOE-EML REMOTE ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENTS PROGRAM. C. Sanderson, Department of Energy, Environmental Measurements Laboratory. The station science technician has operated the system. One sample filter was exposed for the duration of each week, and a weekly schedule of calibration, background, and sample counts was maintained. 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. OO-283-P ANTARCTIC AUTOMATED WEATHER STATIONS. Charles Stearns, University of Wisconsin. The station science technician has monitored the local sites. Automated Weather Station (AWS) transmissions were monitored from Bonaparte Point, Hugo Island, and RACER Rock using the TeraScan system. A trip to the Bonaparte Point AWS revealed that the aerovane was providing a proper wind speed frequency signal to the AWS electronics. A subsequent visit to the unit by a member of BP-032-O and the Palmer Comms Tech revealed that the frequency to voltage converter was also producing a proper output, so the problem appears to be in the CPU unit itself. TO-312-O TERASCAN SATELLITE IMAGING SYSTEM. R. Whritner, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The station science technician has operated the system. Throughout the month, the TeraScan system collected, archived, and processed DMSP and NOAA satellite pass telemetry, maintaining a schedule of 19-23 passes per day. Two to three encrypted SeaWiFs passes were also collected and archived each day. NOAA, DMSP, and encrypted SeaWiFS telemetry were archived for BP-032-O when the LTER grid was clear of clouds. 85 GHz SSM/I ice concentration images were sent to BP-032-O on a weekly basis. Following the Y2K rollover, an error message regarding an out of date magnetic model appeared periodically in the console window, but all system operations appeared to be unaffected. An updated model file was received from SeaSpace and installed, and the message disappeared. Large scale NOAA IR composite "weather" images were produced on a daily basis and provided to the LTER cruise prior to and for the duration of the cruise. Small scale DMSP visible images were also provided on request several times during the cruise. Pass telemetry was archived for BP-032-O at a higher rate during the cruise, and when the cruise was completed, tapes with the accumulated passes were provided to a member of BP-032-O for conveyance to UCSB. TO-513-O UV MONITORING NETWORK. C. Booth, Biospherical Instruments, Inc. The station science technician has operated the system. Throughout the month, raw irradiance data scans were collected daily and transmitted to BSI, and preliminary irradiances and spectral integrals were produced in support of Science. Absolute calibration scans were performed as scheduled. Following the Y2K rollover, modifications were made to the date ranges in a calibration file in order to allow for continued processing of data and production of preliminary results. The automated batch file command in the version of the processing program being used at Palmer proved not to be Y2K compliant, and the erroneous batch files have been edited manually during the processing routine.