Coordinated Arctic Acoustic Transmission Experiment (CAATEX)
Abstract
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Co-PIs: Matthew Dzieciuch and Peter Worcester) propose to conduct the Coordinated Arctic Acoustic Thermometry Experiment (CAATEX), a joint U.S.- Norwegian acoustic propagation experiment across the Arctic basin. Our Norwegian partner is the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Bergen, led by Hanne Sagen. The CAATEX experiment would take advantage of MOSAiC, an International ArcticScience Committee (IASC) sponsored project, in which an icebreaker, the R/V Polarstern, will drift across the Eastern Arctic in the Transpolar Drift from summer 2019 to summer 2020. Transmissions from an acoustic source deployed from the icebreaker will enable remote sensing of the Arctic basin. The NERSC proposal for the source deployment and three receivers has beenfunded by the Norwegian Research Council. We propose to deploy three receivers in the western Arctic. The furthest north receiver will also have an acoustic source that will be capable of being detected at all the other moorings.This proposed experiment is designed to be comparable to previous trans-Arctic propagation experiments conducted in the 1990s. The drift track and multiple receivers of CAATEX will allow for an expansion of the measurements throughout the basin. The comparisons will contrast present day heat content to the past measurements, but there are several other points of comparison. These include transmission loss, which depends in part on the ratio of first-year ice to older ice; acoustic scattering, which diagnoses the strength of internal-wave activity; and the acoustic arrival structure, which changes with the vertical stratification. The CAATEX combination of a drifting and a moored source will provide a powerful space-time sampling of the Arctic basin. More capable receiving arrays and a compact sound source that can be deployedfrom a ship and on a mooring will be able to extend the analysis beyond previous work. Our goal is to explore the fundamental limits of acoustic signal processing and to exploit the remote sensing capabilities of acoustics to characterize the large-scale properties of the Arctic Ocean. The measurements of physical ocean and ice processes, and of the acoustic signal propagation and ambient noise obtained by this experiment will improve our ability to monitor,to communicate and to navigate in the Arctic Ocean.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 27, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141812698
Entities
People
- Matthew A. Dzieciuch
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego