Full Project List

Selected Projects

  • UpTempO: Measuring the Upper Layer Temperature of the Arctic Ocean

    This project aims to measure the time history of summer warming and subsequent fall cooling of the seasonally open water areas of the Arctic Ocean. Investigators will focus on those areas with the greatest ice retreat i.e., the northern Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, and Laptev seas. Their method will be to build up to 10 relatively inexpensive ocean thermistor string buoys per year, to be deployed in the seasonally ice-free regions of the Arctic Ocean. Arctic-ADOS buoy data will be provided to both the research and operational weather forecasting communities in near real time on the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP) web site.

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  • Seasonality of Circumpolar Tundra: Ocean and Atmosphere Controls and Effects on Energy and Carbon Budgets

    Through this project, investigators will characterize the seasonal linkages between the land surface greenness and a suite of land, atmosphere, and ocean characteristics, focusing on the Beringia/ Beaufort Sea, where there have been strong positive increases in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over the past 25 years, and the west-central Arctic Eurasia region, where the NDVI trends have been slightly negative.

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  • North Pole Environmental Observatory

    The observatory is staffed by an international research team that establishes a camp at the North Pole each spring to take the pulse of the Arctic Ocean and learn how the world’s northernmost sea helps regulate global climate.

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  • High Latitude Dynamics

    Our overarching goals are to study and understand the physical processes in the high latitude oceans, including large-scale circulation, shelf-basin interactions, and water mass formation; linkages between polar oceans and the lower latitudes; and the role of polar processes in climate. We do this primarily with observations, drawing on theory and modelling results to explain processes we observe. Our primary tools are subsurface moorings in ice-covered waters, which we deploy in several regions to study different questions.

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  • Bering Strait: Pacific Gateway to the Arctic

    The Bering Strait is the only Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean. Waters flowing through the strait are a key source of nutrients, heat and freshwater for the Arctic. Since 1990, APL-UW has measured the properties of this throughflow using long-term in situ moorings, supported by annual cruises. Project details, data, cruise reports and papers are available on the project web site.

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  • Atlantic Water in the Arctic

    Atlantic Waters (AWs) are volumetrically the largest inflow to the Arctic Ocean.  They form the major subsurface circum-arctic oceanic transport system, and are the greatest pan-arctic reservoir of oceanic heat. This project draws on a variety of observational data to study flow pathways,  fundamental properties and change in the Atlantic waters in the western Arctic.

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  • Arctic Mixing: Changing Seasonality of Wind-driven Mixing

    The Arctic Ocean is (currently) a remarkably quiet place, as the presence of sea-ice isolates the ocean from the mixing effects of wind.  In this interdisciplinary project, we examine how the upper Arctic may change if sea-ice retreat increases.  We use observations and models to study Arctic mixed layer depths, internal wave energy, and the mixing of nutrients into the photic zone, with particular interest on  impacts on Arctic ecosystems.

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  • The Fresh Water Switchyard of the Arctic Ocean

    This project supports the design, development, and implementation of a component of an Arctic Ocean Observing System in the Switchyard region of the Arctic Ocean (north of Greenland and Nares Strait) that serves the scientific studies developed for the IPY (International Polar Year), SEARCH (Study of Environmental ARctic Change), and related programs.

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ABOUT PSC

  • Bonnie Light, PSC Chair, Welcome»
  • The Polar Science Center is a group of dedicated investigators conducting interdisciplinary research on the oceanography, climatology, meteorology, biology and ecology of the ice-covered regions on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system. Learn more »

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