| Summary: | As a part of the UNDER-ICE experiment, acoustic signals were sent from a fixed position (600m under the water surface) west of Svalbard across the Fram Strait to a vertical receiver array on a mooring 200 km away. The UNDER-ICE experiment was set up to transmit for two years. The ice conditions along the section varied between partially to fully ice-covered fields according to the ice conditions throughout the 2- year experiment. However, after the experiment, it was found that the signals from the sources were only received in shorter periods during the experiment. In this paper, we investigate several physical characteristics that may be related to the lack of received signals, such as the environmental conditions (e.g., sea ice or oceanographic fronts) and the changes in the source depths during the experiment. In this work, we use the ice-ocean fields from a model reanalysis covering the experimental period. The reanalysis field is compared to oceanographic data obtained during the initial phase of the experiment. The Bellhop model is used to simulate the transmission of acoustic signals using ice-ocean fields from the reanalysis. This paper was support by the China Scholarship Council, the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1405900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China, EC INTAROS project (grant agreement No 727890, and US Office of Naval Research through the projects UNDERICE and CANAPE: Analysis and publications ((Grant no. N62909-19-1-2012). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission or the Office of Naval Research.
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