The slightly strange capitalisation of the title reveals the seven letter acronym for this new sea ice research project - MIZOPEX. As
the project's home page puts it:
Recent years have seen extreme changes in the Arctic. Particularly striking are changes within the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean, and especially in the seas north of the Alaskan coast. These areas have experienced record warming, reduced sea ice extent, and loss of ice in areas that had been ice‐covered throughout human memory. Even the oldest and thickest ice types have failed to survive through the summer melt period in areas such as the Beaufort Sea and Canada Basin, and fundamental changes in ocean conditions such as earlier phytoplankton blooms may be underway.
A basic question that is significant for the entire Earth system is whether these regions have passed a tipping point, such that they are now essentially acting as sub‐Arctic seas where ice disappears in summer, or instead whether the changes are transient, with the potential for the ice pack to recover. The answer may depend largely on conditions in areas known as marginal ice zones (MIZ); areas where the "ice‐albedo feedback" driven by solar warming is highest, ice melt is extensive, and where human and marine mammal activity is greatest.
MIZOPEX is one of
three projects chosen by NASA to receive funding as part of their UAS Enabled Earth Science program to "expand the utility of Unpiloted Aerial Systems (UAS) for advancing NASA’s goals in Earth System Science". The principal investigator for the project is Dr. James Maslanik from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The long list of collaborators also includes scientists from many other institutions.
The first flight over the Beaufort Sea was due to take place last week:
However
the project field log reveals that they've experienced a few teething troubles with their NASA SIERRA unmanned aircraft, and that flight has yet to take place.
July 20th: Further debugging of SIERRA has identified a likely aircraft component problem. UAF continued their preparations at OP. No trip was made to OP from Deadhorse today due to poor weather conditions.
Hopefully the data will start flowing real soon now!
