Collaborative Research: Development of an Ice-Tethered Winch for the Seasonal Ice Zone

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The ice-tethered winch (ITW) will combine the design of two established technologies, the Ice-Tethered Profiler and Arctic Winch. Merging these technologies will expand upon their individual capabilities by creating a new instrument that can both telemeter subsurface data from beneath the ice and profile the water column over variable depths. The ITW will complement other existing Arctic observational efforts (e.g., icebreaker surveys, gliders, and moorings) by providing relatively high resolution (four profiles daily with less than 10 cm vertical resolution) time series of year-round, near-surface physical and biological properties, including temperature, salinity, pressure, turbidity, and chlorophyll. The ITW will transition between a Eulerian platform when tethered to landfast ice and a semi-Lagrangian drifter when in open water. Year-round data from the ITW will be freely provided in realtime via a newly created ITW website and the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Arctic Observing Network. The ITW website will not only provide a portal for data, but will also include an overview of the project and region targeted to the general public. A public talk will be given in Barrow, Alaska prior to deployment. ITW data will be integrated into the Physical Oceanography curriculum of the Nippon Foundation-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography (CofE) hosted at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. Analysis of ITW data will be used in a student research project during CofE.