Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) Program: Science and Experiment Plan

Abstract

The Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) intensive field program will employ an array of cutting-edge autonomous platforms to characterize the processes that govern Beaufort Sea MIZ evolution from initial breakup and MIZ formation though the course of the summertime sea ice retreat. Instruments will be deployed on and under the ice prior to initial formation of the MIZ along the Alaska coast, and will continue sampling from open water, across the MIZ, and into full ice cover, as the ice edge retreats northward through the summer. The flexible nature of ice-mounted and mobile, autonomous oceanographic platforms (e.g., gliders and floats) facilitates access to regions of both full ice cover and riskier MIZ regions. This approach exploits the extended endurance of modern autonomous platforms to maintain a persistent presence throughout the entire northward retreat. It also takes advantage of the inherent scalability of these instruments to sample over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA566290

Entities

People

  • Craig Lee
  • Lee Freitag
  • M Doble
  • Martin Jeffries
  • Phil Hwang
  • Rick Krishfield
  • Steven R. Jayne
  • Sylvia T. Cole
  • Ted Maksym
  • Wiesław Masłowski

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Navigation
  • Boundary Layer
  • Climate Change
  • Cold Regions
  • Geography
  • Glaciers
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Marginal Ice Zones
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Oceanography
  • Oceans
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Regions
  • Ridges
  • Sea Water
  • Topography

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers
  • Polar and Arctic Studies

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy