Integrated sea ice dynamics observation and analysis system to improve Arctic domain awareness
Abstract
We propose purchasing a package of instrumentation, equipment, and computational hardware that enables us to observe, quantify, and analyze the stress state, morphology, and deformation of Arctic sea ice. These tools support current ONR programs that seek to improve knowledge of sea ice drift and deformation and contribute to improved Arctic domain awareness models relevant to on-ice and ship-based DoD operations. Specifically, the toolkit is required to support the SIDEx program, which is investigating stress transmission through the sea ice and evaluating failure criteria that form the basis of small scale mechanics and dynamics parameterizations used in sea ice models. The program focus is investigating ice mechanics and dynamics at scales between previous laboratory studies (m-scale) and field/remote sensing campaigns (10km scale). The program needs demand stress, strain, ice properties, and fracture/failure information over two dimensional fields covering 100 km2, resolved at scales between 10cm and 10m. Developing such high resolution fields over realistic ice interaction scales is unprecedented and will require (1) the deployment of large strain and stress sensor arrays, (2) detailed measurement of the ice morphology, and (3) data augmentation through data assimilation in a model framework. Our request, therefore includes both field instrumentation for data collection and computational tools that will enable an efficient data processing, analysis, and assimilation workflow Instrumentation requested includes tools for observing ice stress (vibrating wire and piezoresistive in-ice gages); ice strain (a marine band radar, a portable radar interferometer, and differential GPS buoys); and ice thickness/properties (a terrestrial lidar, electromagnetic induction thickness sensor, spectroradiometer, and a multibeam sonar on a ROV). A pair of large scale GPU compute nodes complement to the sensor package. The GPU compute nodes provide computational capacity to rapidly process and assimilate the data into high resolution sea ice models, e.g., a discrete element method (DEM) model, and to use data assimilation to fuse the in-situ measurements with satellite- and aircraft-borne remote sensing to produce complete stress-strain-property fields. The GPU hub will also facilitate proposed remote sensing feature extraction and velocity measurement techniques. The equipment will also benefit a suite of ONR, NSF, NASA, and NOAA funded research at Dartmouth examining sea ice mechanics and dynamics. The sea ice measurement system and associated computational resources will enhance the multidisciplinary education of students, both undergraduate and graduate, and postdoctoral training at Dartmouth College in the field of sea ice observation and prediction and, when not in use in the Arctic, will contribute to a variety of geophysical material investigations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 31, 2020
- Source ID
- N000142012728
Entities
People
- Arnold Song
Organizations
- Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy