PALMER STATION SCIENCE MONTHLY REPORT June 2004 NEWS FROM THE LAB Sonja Wolter, Winter Assistant Supervisor The summer science season came to a close at the beginning of June with the release of numerous 5-gallon buckets of sea stars and the departure of the final member of B-022-P (Amsler / Baker / McClintock). By no means did that indicate a slowdown in activity at Palmer Station, though. On that early-June cruise, several hazardous waste specialists arrived to begin preparing for the 2004 "Haz Run," the biennial removal of hazardous materials that have accumulated on station. For two weeks, the waste crew staged containers to prepare for the return of the R/V LAURENCE M GOULD, and then spent the week of the ship's port call loading the waste on board and preparing the mountains of associated paperwork. The Gould has since begun its voyage to Texas and Louisiana via the Pacific coast of South America and the Panama Canal. In addition to hosting the hazardous waste crew, the labs also provided temporary office space for two surveyors who conducted a complete survey of the station area topography, as well as all the structures on site. Among other things, this new survey is being used to plan for next year's science construction project. The Haz Run happened to straddle Midwinter's Day, so everyone worked the holiday, but station and ship personnel still marked the occasion in various ways. Ten people took a polar plunge at the midwinter moment, quickly followed by a trip to the hottub. And everyone was invited for a decidedly more popular midwinter barbeque dinner featuring a pig, 1.5 lambs and plenty of other tasty vittles. Antarctic Fur Seals continued to tease us during June, staging a mock exodus at the end of May, only to return two weeks later. However, with the exception of a few hearty individuals, the backyard and Bonaparte Point were once again safe for travel by the end of the month. Boating was limited during June by daylight, wind, and ice, so with the exception of an Orca Whale seen by Gould passengers while traveling through the Neumayer Channel, other wildlife spotted during the month was mostly in the immediate Palmer and Bonaparte areas. These sightings included: Antarctic Terns; Antarctic Sheathbills; Kelp Gulls; Blue-Eyed Shags; Giant Petrels; Snow Petrels; Elephant Seals; and a Leopard Seal in Arthur Harbor. Not to be outdone by last winter's wildlife tally, a fly was spotted in the laboratories. Repeated attempts to capture it for study failed. Overall, June's weather can be characterized as unusually dry and calm. The station received only 14.5 mm of melted precipitation; most of that came in the form of approximately 22 cm of snow, which accumulated to a maximum of 36 cm at the end of the month. Temperatures reached as high as +6.1§C and as low as -9.3§C. Winds gusted to a maximum 55 knots and averaged 8 knots for the month. While the averages may not seem completely unusual, station personnel almost felt a bit ill-at-ease in the final two weeks of the month when daily average wind speeds ranged from a mere two to eight knots, and only 2.9mm of precipitation fell. Fortunately, by the time of this writing, the weather had returned to "normal," forcing us to cancel our plans for a Fourth of July picnic on the top of the glacier and allowing us to rest easy once again. The following projects conducted research at Palmer Station during June: G-052-P GPS CONTINUOUSLY OPERATING REFERENCE STATION. Jerry Mullins, Principal Investigator, U.S. Geological Survey The Research Associate operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Throughout the month, 15-second epoch GPS data was collected continually at station PALM, compressed, and transmitted to the USGS in Reston, VA. Information regarding locations of local benchmarks was provided to surveyors mapping out a station site plan. A combination of email and ftp from an external computer was used to transfer a daily data file on 25 June when ftp from a local computer was unable to accomplish the task despite repeated attempts over a twelve-hour period. G-090-P GLOBAL SEISMOGRAPH NETWORK (GSN) SITE AT PALMER STATION. Rhett Butler, Principal Investigator, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) The Research Associate 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 real-time to the U.S. Geological Survey. On 25 June the DP computer crashed, halting data acquisition. A manual reset was required to restore normal operation. Only a few hours of data were lost, and some of that was buffered by the DA computer and retransmitted after the DP was back up and running. O-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 The station physician collects air samples on a semiweekly basis. 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 sent to Scripps where the analysis of O2 and CO2 content takes place. O-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 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory 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. The station physician collects air samples are collected on a weekly basis. O-275-O DOE-EML REMOTE ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENTS PROGRAM (RAMP). Colin Sanderson, Principal Investigator, Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Measurements Laboratory 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. The Research Associate operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. O-283-P ANTARCTIC AUTOMATIC WEATHER STATIONS (AWS). Charles Stearns, Principal Investigator, University of Wisconsin The Research Associate monitors data transmissions for the project. AWS transmissions from Bonaparte Point, Hugo Island, and Racer Rock were monitored using the TeraScan system, with only Bonaparte Point currently operational. AWS data received was also forwarded to UCSB for B-032-P (Smith). A-306-P GLOBAL THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE RADIATION BELTS AND THE LOWER IONOSPHERE. Umran Inan, Principal Investigator, Stanford University The Research Associate 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 strikes that are a principle source of natural VLF signals. Broadband synoptic data was recorded on a schedule of 3 out of every 15 minutes each day, and broadband continuous data was recorded for 6 hours/day. Narrowband continuous data was collected for 12 hours each day. A final special broadband VLF recording was made this month to take advantage of a TIPER satellite pass. Special recordings were also made during periods with particularly strong whistler activity. The BBC and N/S narrowband acquisition computers reported sporadic GPS communications errors throughout the month. Small amounts of N/S narrowband data were lost, and numerous reboots were required, mostly on the BBC machine when it failed to acquire a GPS lock upon restart of the data acquisition program. After receiving reports from Stanford that a number of DVD-Rs received there were unreadable, the status of the discs here was investigated. Several discs were found to be partially unreadable in standard DVD-ROM drives but all were completely accessible to a DVD-R/RW drive. After the standard protocol was changed to include a verification step in the burning process, several days passed without incident, then a series of discs failed to pass verification. Burning on brand name instead of generic discs proved successful, but with a limited supply of brand name blanks, a more complete solution was required. A new drive was installed in the BBC computer, but after a single successful burn raised hopes, the errors simply became write errors instead of verification errors. Finally, a completely different computer was tried, and it proved to be able to reliably burn on the generic blanks. Data is now transferred from the acquisition computers, both BBC and BBS, to the burning computer over the LAN. The entire process is actually faster this way, due to the increased burning speeds available on the new machine, though slightly more human intervention is required by the addition of the LAN transfer step. T-312-O TERASCAN SATELLITE IMAGING SYSTEM. Dan Lubin, Principal Investigator, Scripps Institution of Oceanography The Research Associate operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Throughout the month, the TeraScan system collected, archived, and processed DMSP and NOAA satellite telemetry, capturing approximately 25 passes per day. A weekly 85GHz SSM/I ice concentration image was produced and transferred to UCSB for B-032-P (Smith). The length of the current TeraScan (T-312) cabling was measured, and that information, a series of digital images, and an annotated aerial photograph were provided to personnel in Denver to assist in planning for next winter's construction project. T-513-O ULTRAVIOLET SPECTRORADIOMETER NETWORK Charles Booth, Principal Investigator, Biospherical Instruments, Inc Site visitor: Seth White The Research Associate operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. A BSI SUV-100 UV spectroradiometer 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. A BSI GUV-511 filter radiometer, which has four channels in the UV and one channel in the visible for measuring Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), is located next to the SUV-100. Data from the GUV-511 instrument is made available on a daily basis on the project's website www.biospherical.com/nsf/ . The annual site visit was successfully concluded on 05 June. The site visit provides a yearly opportunity for calibrations, maintenance, and upgrades. A scheduled absolute calibration was performed on 18 June. TIDE GAGE Tony Amos, Point of Contact, The University of Texas Marine Science Institute The Research Associate operates and maintains on-site equipment for the project. Tide height, seawater temperature, and salinity are monitored on a continual basis by a gage mounted at the Palmer Station pier. Both scheduled and unscheduled network file server outages resulted in occasional minor interruptions in data collection. Current and historical tide gage data was provided to the surveyors to allow for location of the tide gage itself and for "ground-truthing" of the mean sea level derived from the model geoid. METEOROLOGY The Research Associate acts as chief weather observer, and compiles and distributes meteorological data. At the end of the month a summary report is prepared and sent to interested parties. Weather data collected using the automated electronic system is archived locally and forwarded semimonthly to the University of Wisconsin for archiving and further distribution. Synoptic reports are automatically generated every six hours by the Palmer Meteorological Observing System (PalMOS) and emailed to the NOAA for entry into the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). Current weather observations for all Antarctic stations, including Palmer, are available on the web at: http://www.wunderground.com/global/AA.html. Prior to shutting down the PalMOS system for a UPS switchover on 03 June, the Zeno operating parameters were saved to EEPROM, which halted the Zeno as well. This is the second time that executing a simple Zeno command has stopped it from operating, and, as with the first time, operations were restored by disconnecting and reconnecting the power wire at the enclosure.