AAD buoy data collected during ISPOL 2004, Western Weddell Sea

Ice Station POLarstern [ISPOL] was a multi-national, interdisciplinary study coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany, involving scientists from different institutes and nations across a range of scientific disciplines. ISPOL had been planned as a 50-day drift station in the Western Weddell Sea. Due to particularly heavy sea-ice conditions, the start of the drifting ice station was delayed, so that the drift interval, originating at -68 degrees 10'N, -54 degrees 46'W, lasted only a total of 35 days (28.11.2004 - 01.01.2005). Data and auxiliary information presented here are on the sea-ice drift and deformation experiment, which was a collaborative research program involving the International Arctic Research Center [IARC] at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Australian Antarctic Division [AAD], the Finnish Institute of Marine Research [FIMR] and the Alfred Wegener Institute [AWI]. Buoy contributions came from all four institutions listed above. - This metadata record covers only AAD buoy data from the ISPOL 2004 experiment. To estimate the characteristics of the sea-ice drift and dynamics in the Western Weddell Sea a meso-scale array of 26 drifting ice buoys was deployed for about 30 days during late November and December 2004. Sea-ice drift was obtained from the horizontal GPS-derived location measurements, which were made at all buoys but collected at various temporal resolutions and different spatial accuracies. Auxiliary instruments were attached to some of the sea-ice drifters, including temperature probes for air and sea-ice temperatures, and air pressure sensors. Four of the buoys were left in the ice pack after the end of the ISPOL field phase to record the large-scale drift in the region around the ice station from late summer into winter. See the metadata record 'Ice Station Polarstern. Aerial photographs over sea ice taken during the ISLOP project' for more information on the ISPOL project. Also, see the URL given below for the ISPOL home page.