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Arctic and subarctic conditions represent some of the most challenging environments to make long-term in situ oceanographic measurements. These areas bring the normal challenges of deep water, turbidity, uncertain bottom types and, in areas such as Cook Inlet, some of the world's largest tidal height changes and tidal currents. This paired with the presence of sea ice, which can be up to tens of meters...
Recent studies on global climate change have identified the Arctic as the fastest warming region on Earth. Resulting trends of receding sea ice have led to more accessible Arctic waterways during summer months and an anticipated increase in maritime transport throughout the region. Prolonged access between North America and Europe via the Northeast Passage is of significant interest to the international...
During an oil spill, an accurate assessment of the trajectory of oil is important for a quick and effective remediation response. In the remote Arctic, oil fate and transport models are critical; especially during winter months when darkness and ice presence hamper visual detection of oil. A set of equations to describe the transport of oil in ice-covered waters and an environmental database were...
With harsh Arctic conditions prohibiting easy, year-round access to subsea assets due to surface ice and weather conditions comes the need to create subsea monitoring technologies capable of reliably surviving long term deployments with little or no intervention. High capacity battery pods and UPSs provide an ideal power delivery method for subsea systems when surface ice and inclement weather precludes...
Utilization of Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) technology on hydrographic surveys in the Arctic result in significant time savings to field operations while simultaneously improving safety and providing more capability.
Sea ice type is the most sensitive variables in Arctic ice monitoring and its detailed information is essential for ice situation evaluation, climate prediction and vessels navigating. In this study, we analyzed the different sea ice types with the Cryosat-2 (CS-2) SAR mode waveform data. The waveform of CS-2 data was describe by a set of parameters: pulse peakiness (PP), leading-edge width (LeW),...
The increasing level of commercial marine activity in high latitudes creates an ever growing risk of oil spills. Even in logistically accessible, ice-free oceans, characterizing the extent and nature of a spill can be challenging as highlighted by the Deepwater Horizon incident. We propose to develop an AUV-based approach inspired by an existing small, long-range system, called the Tethys Long-Range...
This work demonstrates a methodology to detect sea ice presence over the Arctic and Antarctic regions using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) data obtained with the UK TDS-1 satellite. The algorithm is based on estimating the degree of coherence of the received GNSS reflected waveform or Delay-Doppler Map (DDM). While at open ocean conditions, the scattered signal follows...
Sea ice is an important quantity for the radiation budget of the Earth's climate system. In this paper we present a comparison of SMAP and SMOS measured brightness temperatures and translate a validated retrieval algorithm for the thickness of thin sea ice from SMOS to SMAP radiometer observations. For October to December all observations of SMAP in forward and backward direction are compared as daily...
Melt ponds cover up to 50% of Arctic summer sea ice and strongly affect the local radiative balance. However, they are currently poorly represented in circulation models. One of the reasons is the lack of reliable large-scale observations. A challenge encountered during melt pond retrieval from optical satellite observations is the filtering of cloud which in the visible range of spectrum look similarly...
Currently available sea ice thickness retrieval algorithms are compromised in summer in the presence of melt. This study presents a new approach to estimate sea ice thickness in summer in the presence of melt ponds. Analysis of field data obtained during RV “Polarstern” cruise ARK27/3 (August – October 2012) has shown a clear connection of ice thickness under melt ponds to their measured spectral...
Maritime Way Scientific Ltd (MWS) in collaboration with the Defence Research and Development Canada, Atlantic Research Centre (DRDC-Atlantic) is developing a hardware-in-the-loop acoustic simulator for studying underwater acoustic propagation and the reliability of underwater communications signals. While the simulator can be used to model a wide variety of physical environments, most of the effort...
In this work taking the advantage of high resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) measurements we present first preliminary results of short-period internal waves (IW) observations in the Barents, Kara and White seas based on ENVISAT ASAR data for summer-autumn months in 2007–2011. Altogether more than 2000 IW packets were identified in about 1400 SAR images. Detailed maps of internal...
The availability of Cryosat-2 with its coverage throughout the Arctic Ocean up to 88N is a quantum leap forward for altimetric gravity field modeling and here we have tried to quantify the improvement of Cryosat-2 to global and particularly Arctic altimetric gravity field modeling through a comparison with highly accurate marine gravity observations.
CryoSat-2 Level 1B and Level 2 data are compared with coincident airborne laser scanner and airborne electromagnetic induction surveys conducted in the Baltic Sea in March 2011 and in the Lincoln Sea in March and April 2012. Across-track snagging caused range retrieval errors in all examined tracks. The L2 surface height profiles are very noisy due to poor retracker performance. Cryosat-2 L2 data...
The Marginal Ice Zone Ocean and Ice Observations and Processes EXperiment (MIZOPEX) aims to utilize unmanned aircraft in making repeated scientific observations of the surface water and sea-ice conditions during the melting period in the marginal ice zone of the Arctic Ocean. Unmanned aircraft from NASA will carry the sensors, a suite of instruments to make these measurements, including the SlimSAR...
The arctic could be ice free during the summer by as early as 2040 [1]. This could alter the dominant shipping routes between Europe and Asia. The ability to monitor this traffic is hindered by lack of sensors, communication and power for the sensors. SeaSonde High Frequency radars were installed along the northwest corner of Alaska from July to December 2012. These radars were able to make simultaneous...
In this paper, focusing on the Northwest Passage, we looked into the relevance between sea surface temperature(SST), sea level pressure(SLP) and the reducing amount of annual sea ice concentration (May minus September) based on the NSST daily average data from NASA MODISA, SLP monthly average data from NCEP and AMSR-E sea ice concentration product with the resolution of 6.25 kilometers from the year...
In recent years, rapid warming of Arctic has made the Northwest Passage navigation possible. In this paper, we roughly studied features of variation of sea ice's concentration during the summer season, June, August and September, using AMSR-E sea ice concentration product with the resolution of 6.25 kilometers from the year 2002 to 2010. By studying the variation, we got deeper understanding of the...
In March and April 2010, an ISE Explorer Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) was deployed to Canada's high Arctic. The under-ice bathymetric surveys conducted on this deployment support Canada's submission to establish the outer limits of its continental shelf under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
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