| Summary: | The investigators propose to take annual springtime, large-scale airborne surveys of the Arctic Ocean. These surveys will be in two regions: the central Arctic Ocean (annual surveys), and the southern Beaufort Sea (biannual surveys). They will thus sample the two main circulation features of the Arctic Ocean, the Transpolar Drift Stream and the Beaufort Gyre. In both cases, the researchers will leverage existing operational capabilities when possible, such as the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO) in the central Arctic and US Navy Ice Camps in the Beaufort Sea. The proposed surveys have two main goals: (a) observe Arctic Ocean change by taking sea ice and ocean sections across frontal features, and (b) advance the understanding of seasonal variability in the sea ice upper ocean system to map the growth and melt of ice and to reduce seasonal bias in comparisons of past and future hydrographic records.
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