Xuelong Sets a Record With 12 Arctic Ice Stations on a Single Voyage

During China's 16th Arctic Ocean scientific expedition, the research vessel Xuelong set a record: over 14 days of operations it established 12 sea-ice observation stations, the most deployed by a single vessel in a Chinese Arctic mission. Work began on July 25, and all the stations lie north of 82 degrees latitude.

An observation array on the ice

The sites were chosen with the durability of the sea ice through the summer melt season in mind. The team deployed more than 30 ice-based buoys across the stations. A leader of the sea-ice team said the hydrology group has more than a dozen ice-based ocean profiling buoys, so they set up 12 ice stations to carry out array monitoring. In addition, Xuelong 2 planned to establish about seven more stations.

For samples, the team extracted a sea-ice core 1.3 meters thick and 1.2 meters on each side to study the physical and mechanical properties of sea ice. The observations focus on several areas, including the atmospheric boundary layer, sea-ice physics, sub-ice ecology and sub-ice ocean dynamics.

Domestic equipment takes the lead

Notably, more than 90 percent of the widely deployed instruments were domestically produced, and an ecological unmanned ice station was deployed for the first time. He Jianfeng, chief scientist of this Arctic expedition, said the equipment has gradually moved from the simplest instruments to ecological unmanned ice stations, markedly improving observation capacity.

Against the backdrop of rapidly declining Arctic sea ice, such an automated observation network will help improve understanding of the coupled atmosphere, sea-ice and ocean system, and in turn the accuracy of climate prediction. Each station on the ice is a window onto polar change.