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type: Concept

ANTARCTIC SEA ICE
type: Concept
definition: Sea ice thickness, combined with areal extent as the sea ice mass balance, is the principal response of climatic and oceanic interaction in the marine areas of Antarctica. A major thrust of the project is to obtain sea ice thickness, extent, and physical properties in order to characterize mechanisms of growth and decay and the roles of both the ocean and atmosphere in the sea ice annual cycle. Ice thickness data will be obtained by a variety of methods including visual and automatic camera ice observations from vessels, buoy arrays, airborne EM surveys, underice draft surveys using Autosub AUVs, satellite remote sensing and moored Upward Looking Sonar arrays. Establishment of a quantitative base for circumpolar ice thickness will allow for comparison to the ASPeCt ice thickness distribution derived from ship observations in the past and for future determinations of the thickness distribution that will be available from validated satellite altimetric observations. The Antarctic sea ice cover can then be quantitatively evaluated for response to global climate change in the future and these measurements, as the ice thickness baseline, will be a legacy of IPY. Comparisons of altimetric derived ice thicknesses with prior ship observations will provide ice thickness variability for a thirty year record in selected areas providing some possibility of interdecadal variability determination in sea ice thickness for the recent past as well. A new project from Finland, (S1FL), will contribute to the overall program by investigations of Sea Ice Mechanics and Modeling. For the fast ice, a network of coastal stations, the Antarctic Fast Ice Network (277), is being established. As with the drifting pack, the response of the fast ice to changes in climate and oceanic influence will be monitored and understood with an array of stations to evaluate regional influences. Because of the access from the manned stations, a wider variety of through ice measurements and detailed structural…
in scheme: projects