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Tip of the Profiler

March 4, 2015

Below this buoy drifting atop an ice floe hangs the rest of an instrument called an Ice-Tethered Profiler (ITP). The instrument, developed at WHOI, has a motorized device that rides up and down a cable hundreds of meters long, measuring ocean properties and relaying data via satellite for up to several years. This ITP was installed in the Beaufort Sea in March 2014, part of a multiyear Navy-funded study to investigate the complex air-ice-ocean interactions that govern the formation and retreat of polar sea ice and help predict the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover in the future. (Photo by John Kemp, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)