Digital Arctic Shipping scientists participated in field experiments organised by projects Coordinated Arctic Acoustic Thermometry Experiment (CAATEX) and Useful Arctic Knowledge (UAK) in 2020 and 2021. Both cruises were coordinated by NERSC. During these research cruises, scientists from Digital Arctic Shipping collected in situ measurements of sea ice and documented ice conditions at these ice stations as well as along the vessel route (Figure 1).
Collecting in situ measurements of sea ice is important for, among others, validation of data acquired by imaging sensors on drones, aircrafts and satellites. During the CAATEX 2020 and UAK 2021 cruises, several ice stations with ice cores and measurements of salinity and conductivity of the ice were collected. Data from these ice stations will among others be used for validation of the drone data and in the construction of a 3D model of the ice using drone photogrammetry.
Figure 1: Photo from one of the ice stations during the CAATEX 2020 research cruise (source: Bonnie Raffel, NPI).