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Arctic Outpost

October 26, 2012

This year marked the tenth year of the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project led by WHOI physical oceanographer Andrey Proshutinsky and Richard Krishfield. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and WHOI, the project is a long-term study of the physical, chemical, and biological processes in the Beaufort Sea and the effects that global warming and climate change are having on the delicate environmental balances in the far north. This year, an international team of researchers spent more than a month on board the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent deploying five ice-tethered profilers (one shown here), replacing moorings, and taking water samples across this critical portion of the Arctic Ocean. (Photo by Rick Krishfield, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)