Ice Detection Buoy - Alaska Ocean Observing System
Original (non-English) name
Acronym
Ice Detection Buoy - AOOS
Citation
Abstract
Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and industry partner Pacific Gyre developed and deployed an economical mooring package designed to provide full water column heat content and stratification data in real time to scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), forecasters at the National Weather Service (NWS), and others. The Ice Detection Buoy (IDB) mooring, also referred to as the Freeze-up Detection Mooring, is outfitted with an expendable surface float that houses a satellite communications package, a tether release, an inductive modem, and a sea surface temperature sensor. The surface float is connected to as many as four Sea-Bird Electronics’ SBE 37 inductive modem CTDs (conductivity-temperature with depth instruments) that transmit hourly temperature, conductivity and pressure to the surface float from multiple subsurface depths (8, 20, 30, and 40 m). The first mooring deployed in 2015 was also equipped with a sub-surface camera intended to record and send digital images of the upper water column; however, the camera portion never worked well and was abandoned in later iterations. The mooring design allows for only a small expendable portion of the mooring to be lost to the ice while providing much needed realtime water column stratification information running up to freeze-up.