Airborne seawater sampling through Arctic sea ice

While modern remote sensing technology provides measurement capability for a number of seawater  properties, there are important measurements that can not (yet?) be done remotely so physical water  samples carefully collected and returned to the lab remain essential.  In the ice covered Arctic Ocean water samples are difficult to obtain from ships because of the  extensive ice cover and thick pressure ridges. Aircraft have been used for sampling the Arctic Ocean  for the past half-century using bottles at pre-selected depths and internally recording CTDs lowered  through leads or holes drilled in the ice. Traditional CTD/rosette technology used for sampling from  ships are too heavy and bulky to deploy from ice-capable aircraft.  We have developed a lightweight modular system that is deployed through a 12-inch (30cm) hole in  the ice. Real-time CTD traces are displayed on a laptop and the bottles are tripped at selected depths  using modified Seabird hardware and a Lamont-developed bottle tripping system.

Speaker: Dale Chayes, Columbia Univ.