Relative motion of the buoys in the MOSAiC Distributed Network from 2019-12-20 to 2020-01-19

• Main Author: Watkins, Daniel M.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2023
• Subjects: sea ice; arctic; mosaic; buoys; North Pole; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10278327

During the 2019-2020 MOSAiC Arctic expedition, a set of autonomous sensors were deployed surrounding the R/V Polarstern . This animation shows the positions of GPS-reporting buoys during the 30-day period from December 20, 2019 to January 1, 2020. Concentric rings mark 10 km intervals from the R/V Polarstern. Black triangles indicate buoys reporting only position; these buoys are used to calculate sea ice velocity. Differences in velocity indicate deformation. Sites with multiple instrumentation types are indicated in color--green circles mark the M-sites, blue squares mark the L-sites (including the LM site near the CO), and the red star marks the Central Observatory. Buoy locations are shown in the animation in polar stereographic coordinates rather than in latitude/longitude. Because the drift is near the North Pole, latitude/longitude maps of the drift array show skewed distances and appear to rotate as the direction of north changes. Here, I indicate the position of the North Pole with the arrow in the bottom right and I provide the latitude and longitude of the Central Observatory in the bottom left. Gaps in buoy position time series result in some markers disappearing and reappearing in the animation.