Selected results from the IAOOS project
Christine Provost1, Jacques Pelon2, Nathalie Sennechael3, Zoé Koenig3, Nicolas Villacieros-Robineau3, Vincent Mariage4, Michel Calzas5 and Frederic Blouzon6, (1)CNRS, LOCEAN, Paris, France, (2)CNRS, Paris Cedex 16, France, (3)LOCEAN, University Pierre and Marie Curie, PARIS, France, (4)CNRS-UPMC, LATMOS, Paris Cedex 05, France, (5)CNRS, INSU, Paris Cedex 16, France, (6)CNRS, INSU, Meudon, France
Abstract:
The key to documenting and understanding change in the Arctic is continuous monitoring. The high cost of Arctic operations thus makes observations by satellite or with long-endurance, refurbishable, autonomous platforms a cost effective solution to continuously observe on-going changes in near real-time. IAOOS (Ice Atmosphere Ocean Observing System,
http://www.iaoos-equipex.upmc.fr,
http://iaoos.ipev.fr/) is a nine-year project (2011-2019), with an objective to provide and maintain an integrated observing system over the Arctic Ocean that collects synoptic and near real time information related to the state of the atmosphere, the snow, the sea-ice and the ocean. The IAOOS system involves 15 autonomous platforms operating at any given time in the Arctic Ocean for a total period of 5 years (2015-2019). Each platform is composed of 3 elements for oceanographic, snow / sea-ice and atmospheric vertical soundings.
The first three years of the project were devoted to the development and progressive in situ testing of the IAOOS platform prototypes. Major tests were performed deploying more and more complete IAOOS platforms at the North Pole in April 2012, 2013 and 2014. These platforms drifted from the North Pole in April to Fram Strait (September, October) providing spring summer and autumn field data. The Norwegian ice camp on board the R/V Lance from January to June 2015, as part of the N-ICE 2015 project, was an excellent opportunity to thoroughly proof test the IAOOS platform in winter (in complement to the spring-summer drifts from the North Pole to Fram Strait). Being on the site, scientists had hands on the systems, could test various configurations and gathered classical observations and ancillary data for checking data quality and fostering data interpretation. The first IAOOS array deployment took place from Araon summer cruise in July 2015 from R/V Polarstern during the German cruise TRANSARC II late summer 2015. Selected results from the IAOOS deployments are presented.
