The Svalbard Marginal Ice Zone Campaign 2024 completed
A recent observational campaign (Spring 2024) in the Marginal Ice Zone, which collected measurements about the atmosphere, wave, and sea-ice systems, has initiated a large-scale model intercomparison to better understand our state-of-the-art coupled forecasting systems. Additional model simulation submissions are still accepted!
Remote sensing and in-situ data acquisition are needed for further advancing the atmosphere, sea-ice, wave and ocean forecast models, particularly in the very dynamic area of the Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ). The Svalbard MIZ 2024 Campaign, supported by the FOCUS project and PCAPS, as well as the Norwegian Coast Guard, targeted these scientific necessities by deploying an array of observational instruments to capture the complex nature of the coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean system. The campaign was assisted by OceanDataLab, which provided a platform for real-time visualizations of the observations in combination with a large suite of satellite remote sensing products.
A set of 34 open-source buoys was deployed north of the Svalbard Archipelago in April 2024 to collect a combination of atmospheric temperature, sea-ice drift, and wave energy spectra throughout the main observation period from April 6th to May 5th, 2024. A highly dynamic period was covered, including a Cold Air Outbreak, the formation of polynyas, as well as the interplay between strong winds, waves, and the subsequent northward retreat of the sea-ice edge. Such observed phenomena are critical in assessing coupled model predictions and their uncertainties. The full Cruise Report is available here.
Overview of the buoys trajectories, with SAR image background corresponding to May 1st 2024; downloaded from the OceanVirtualLaboratory website.
The main objective of the campaign is to advance forecasting systems’ capability to simulate the complex interactions between atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean in the MIZ. In total, 10 modeling and forecasting centers are supporting this initiative by providing operational and experimental forecasts from about 20 different model setups.
Data are interactively browsable on the Ocean Virtual Laboratory website and the full design of the open source buoy platform, including internal working and performance, is available here.