Beaufort Gyre Mooring Measurements of Ice Draft and Ocean Properties

Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project Mooring B collected oceanographic and sea ice data over a 358-day deployment from 2003 to 2004. The dataset includes over 15.4 million samples of ice draft from an upward-looking sonar, 319 profiles from a moored profiler, and 20,585 samples from a bottom pressure recorder. The project was conducted by the SCIOPS organization, with data last updated in March 2005.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in ice_draft from the upward-looking sonar to study sea ice melt and growth cycles.
• Correlate salinity and temperature profiles from the McLane Moored Profiler with horizontal_velocity data to model water mass movement.
• Use bottom pressure_recorder data to study deep ocean pressure variations and infer current dynamics.
• Combine ice_draft measurements with concurrent water column temperature and salinity data to investigate ice-ocean heat exchange.

Strengths

• High-resolution time-series with 15,436,160 ice draft samples from the upward-looking sonar.
• Multi-instrument deployment providing 319 vertical profiles and 20,585 bottom samples over a continuous 358-day period.

Limitations

• Data is from a single mooring location (Mooring B), limiting spatial representativeness.
• Temporal coverage is limited to one annual cycle (2003-2004), preventing analysis of long-term trends.
• Specific data formats and column structures are unknown, which may complicate initial analysis.

Provenance

Source

Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project, organization SCIOPS, via NASA Earthdata.

Collection Method

Data collected by a moored oceanographic station equipped with a bottom pressure recorder, a McLane Moored Profiler, and an upward-looking sonar.

Time Range

2003 to 2004, covering a 358-day deployment.

Freshness

Data is from 2005, representing conditions from two decades ago.

Geography

Beaufort Gyre region in the Arctic Ocean (specific coordinates unknown).