Collaborative Research: Sea Ice Deformation Observation with an AON

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The PIs coherently argue that current coverage of GPS enabled buoys is insufficient to monitor the Arctic-wide sea ice deformation. ARGOS positioning is currently used on most buoys and is unable to resolve ice drift response to inertial wave, tidal forcing and short-term weather events. Velocity and strain-rate errors consequent to the use of ARGOS positioning result in misrepresentation of ice deformation?s impact on the ice thickness distribution. They argue that there is a very simple fix to this problem - deploying GPS equipped buoys. The PIs present a way forward to convert the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP) buoy network to GPS positioning, and are provided modest start-up funds to implement a demonstration of this. They anticipate that the improved IABP network will provide pan-Arctic monitoring of regional ice deformation variability on sub-daily to seasonal time scales. Sea ice deformation products will be developed for public dissemination, enabling regional estimates of ice thickness distribution to be improved and open water fraction monitored, essentially assisting in the monitoring of ocean-atmosphere fluxes in the Arctic. They propose buoy deployments to complement Automated Drifting Stations (ADSs). At these stations localized measurements of multi-year ice mass balance, ocean fluxes, ocean profiles and meteorology are made. Understanding surface fluxes and ice mass balance in the ADS vicinity requires an understanding of the evolution of the local ice thickness distribution. Arguing that it currently is unknown what area of local ice pack affects the energy budget measured at the ADS, they plan to deploy local GPS deformation arrays around ADSs with a view to determining the spatial scale necessary to monitor in order to provide a full picture of how both ice dynamics and thermodynamics impact the energy budget at the ocean-ice- atmosphere interface in the vicinity of the ADS.