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SATICE, a high-precision GPS autonomous platform
Illustration of SATICE buoy 3 and 4
Project “Arctic Ocean sea ice and ocean Circulation using Satellite Methods” (SATICE), is the first high-rate, high-precision positioning experiment on sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. SATICE is consisting of an array of five polar GPS buoys operating simultaneously. The buoys were developed by the Spanish National Research council (CSIC) and the Scottish Marine Institute (SAMS). Each buoy collects continuous GPS and freeboard data while drifting on sea ice. Data from each buoy is streamed over a satellite link to a central computer on the Internet in near real time, where they are processed to estimate the time-varying buoy positions. SATICE positioning goal is sub-hourly, sub-decimeter precision in three dimensions over buoy separations spanning from intra-floe to pan-Arctic scales. In August 2011 the first two SATICE buoys were deployed during the Araon cruise in the Chukchi sea.
SATICE scientific goals are to estimate:
- spatio-temporal variations of ocean tides in the Arctic Ocean
- ocean circulation
- ocean dynamic topography
- sea-ice freeboard heights
- ice thickness
- ice mass balance
using in-situ, high-precision GPS observations of sea-ice motions, satellite-based radar and lidar sea-ice altimetry, and satellite gravity.
It is crucial to monitor these ice and ocean parameters to improve our understanding of the key thermodynamic and dynamic processes that drive the Arctic climate change. These estimates will be used to improve coupled ice-ocean-atmospheric models and Arctic Ocean tide models.
SATICE scientific goals are to estimate:
- spatio-temporal variations of ocean tides in the Arctic Ocean
- ocean circulation
- ocean dynamic topography
- sea-ice freeboard heights
- ice thickness
- ice mass balance
using in-situ, high-precision GPS observations of sea-ice motions, satellite-based radar and lidar sea-ice altimetry, and satellite gravity.
It is crucial to monitor these ice and ocean parameters to improve our understanding of the key thermodynamic and dynamic processes that drive the Arctic climate change. These estimates will be used to improve coupled ice-ocean-atmospheric models and Arctic Ocean tide models.
