Collaborative Research: Coordination, Data Management and Enhancement of the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP), and US Interagency Arctic Buoy Programme (USIABP)

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The ability to predict weather across the globe, and sea ice conditions critical for defense and maritime operations in the Arctic, requires observations of surface meteorology and ice/ocean currents. The US Interagency Arctic Buoy Program (USIABP) and International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP) maintain this fundamental Arctic Observing Network across the expanse of the Arctic Ocean. Observations and data sets produced by Polar Science Center (PSC) and University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) for the IABP have led to advancing scientific understanding of regional and global impacts influenced by changes in the Arctic Ocean. Through diverse outreach efforts, the PIs will disseminate their scientific findings in media interviews and participate in the annual Polar Science Weekend and Climate Curiosity Days at Seattle's Pacific Science Center. This project also provides opportunities to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) based programs that work with high school students to learn about, design and launch buoys, and support US Naval Academy student buoy engineering projects. The researchers have developed a low-cost open source Arctic buoy to gather more data, and are involved in producing a range of data visualization art projects to engage the public with the Arctic through exhibition venues in Canada, Norway, and the US including at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C.The USIABP will deploy buoys in the increasing areas of open water in the Arctic during summer and has established a semi-permanent test site in Utqiagvik, Alaska, to assess the quality of the instruments now used by the IABP to observe the Arctic Ocean. This project intends to maintain a network of buoys with a spacing of less than 250 km, or more than 200 buoys spread across the Arctic Ocean, and with deployment logistics that include: 1) aircraft landing on the sea ice in the spring; 2) icebreakers deploying buoys for the IABP as opportunities arise; and 3) aircraft dropping buoys onto the sea ice. These observations are assimilated into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models that are used to forecast weather on synoptic time scales, and into the many long-term atmospheric reanalyses that are used for climate studies. Overall, the observations from the IABP are essential for: 1) monitoring Arctic and global climate change; 2) forcing, assimilation, and validation of global weather and climate models; and 3) validation of satellite derived estimates of sea ice motion, surface temperature, and sea ice thickness. Further, IABP Observations are shared through the IABP server, the World Meteorological Organization and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (WMO/IOC) Global Telecommunications System (GTS), and stored in publicly accessible archives including the NSF Arctic Data Center. These observations provide the longest continuing record for the Arctic and have been one of the cornerstones of the Arctic Observing Network for environmental forecasting and studies of climate and climate change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.