Svalbard Marginal Ice Zone 2024 Campaign -- Cruise Report

TL;DR

The Svalbard Marginal Ice Zone 2024 Campaign aimed to enhance understanding of atmosphere, waves, and sea-ice interactions in the Arctic to improve coupled forecasting systems, through extensive in situ observations during a research cruise.

Contribution

This campaign established a comprehensive observational network in the Arctic MIZ to support validation and development of coupled weather, sea-ice, and wave forecasting models.

Findings

Deployment of 34 buoys in the MIZ north of Svalbard

Collection of temperature, drift, and wave spectra data

Detailed instrument calibration and environmental conditions report

Abstract

The coupling of weather, sea-ice, ocean, and wave forecasting systems has been a long-standing research focus to improve Arctic forecasting system and their realism and is also a priority of international initiatives such as the WMO research project PCAPS. The goal of the Svalbard Marginal Ice Zone 2024 Campaign was to observe and better understand the complex interplay between atmosphere, waves, and sea-ice in the winter Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) in order to advance the predictive skill of coupled Arctic forecasting systems. The main objective has been to set up a network of observations with a spatial distribution that allows for a representative comparison between in situ observations and gridded model data. The observed variables include air and surface temperature, sea-ice drift, and wave energy spectra. With the support of the Norwegian Coast Guard, we participated in the research cruise with KV Svalbard from 4. April - 21.April 2024. In total 34 buoys were deployed in the Marginal Ice Zone north of the Svalbard Archipelago. The first part of the report describes the instruments and their calibration (Section 2), and the second part briefly describes the weather, sea ice, and wave conditions during the campaign.