Last preparations for fieldtrip with KV Svalbard

Edmond Hansen is the Co-leader of iAOOS Norway, and is also leader of Work Package 1: In Situ Observations and this field campagin which is Task 1.8: Drifting Station KV Svalbard.

Edmond holds the ship KV Svalbard in high regard for this fieldwork:

- KV Svalbard represents the best ice going capabilities in Norway, and is hence our best option as research platform for this project , he says.
-But the vessel is a military ship with little or no infrastructure for research. All scientific equipment and work procedures must therefore be specially adapted or modified for the working conditions on this particular ship.
In other words, there are lots of adjustment type of work to be done in preparation for fieldwork like this.
He continues: - Special winches, laboratory containers and portable scientific equipment has been made and will be installed on the ship.

The Norwegian coastguard ice breaker KV Svalbard will serve as a platform for two drift stations. The vessel will penetrate into the Transpolar Drift to about 80°-81° N. The ship will then partly drift and partly steam south along the lower limb of the Transpolar Drift, across the DAMOCLES freshwater and ice thickness observational array at 79° N, and south to the corresponding array at 74° N.

Helicopter sections (ice thickness profiling (Gerland et al. in press), short ice stations with oceanographic measurements and snow and ice surveys) are made across the drift stream. The sampling will be a combination of stations moored to selected ice floes, and stations during the southward steaming.

The data sampled under this task should contribute to the basis for our understanding of biogeochemical cycling and food-web functions (task 3.5). It should also contribute to the data base for studies of the sea ice feedback mechanism (Task 3.6): Along with the Tara and NP-35 instrumentation (Task 1.7), this part of iAOOS Norway will cover the annual cycle of the observed parameters along the entire Transpolar Drift length, from its origin, through Fram Strait and well into the receiving basins. The third main component under the proposed campaigns is addressing the export of freshwater through Fram Strait: the strength and along-path evolution of sea ice, freshwater and volume transport of the East Greenland Current and Transpolar Drift as it exits the Arctic - the fate of the freshwater. The latter must be seen in connection with the freshwater observational arrays (Task 1.9). It basically consists of a mapping of the winter/spring time TS and current fields across the EGC and wide East Greenland Shelf, along with an associated mapping of sea ice thickness distributions.