Funds are provided to initiate massive sampling of the Arctic Ocean water properties during all seasons. In order to detect and monitor change, this project document the Arctic Ocean variability using a series of expendable instruments that will provide real time information about sea ice drift and the properties of the Arctic water column. This will be accomplished by expanding ongoing efforts to develop, test and field a set of WHOI Ice-Tethered Profilers (ITPs): autonomous instruments that return high-vertical-resolution measurements of upper (~800 m) ocean temperature and salinity beneath sea ice during all seasons at better than daily temporal resolution over a projected three-year lifetime. Support is provided to build and deploy 4 ITP systems in 2007 and an additional 4 in 2008, and to acquire and make publicly available the data from those instruments through 2009.
