ABSTRACT OPP-9701523 OPP-9701880 BROOKS, STEVEN MASLANIK, JAMES NATIONAL OCEANIC AND UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION This research project is a key component of a large, coordinated, multi-investigator program, Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) Ocean. The research program will be conducted for 14 months from a ship frozen into the ice pack. These investigators will utilize measurements of the flux of heat from different surface ice conditions of the permanent ice cap of the Arctic Ocean. Their results will help determine how atmospheric and oceanic heating is coupled to adsorption of heat by the ice. These measurements are critical to understanding how heat is reflected or absorbed by the sea ice as it melts in the summer and thickens in the winter in response to seasonal variations in climate. The measurements of surface ice conditions will be incorporated into a modeling program that makes an essential contribution to the measurements and modeling by the SHEBA team of researchers. This project will be integral to the full SHEBA measurement program of atmospheric and oceanic variables conducted with a large array of instruments on the ice floe and aircraft flying above as well as ice and ocean property measurements made on and below the ice floe. The combined set of measurements and sea ice models in SHEBA will allow refinement of climate models for the Arctic region. Those improved models will lead to better predictions of the climate and the permanence of the Arctic ice cap under a proposed global warming that could occur if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are increased above present levels.
