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Floe Jumping

March 27, 2018

John Kemp, operations leader of the WHOI Mooring Operations and Engineering Group, leaps over melt pond in the Arctic carrying equipment to drill a hole into an ice floe to install an instrument called an ice-tethered profiler (ITP). ITPs have a buoy that sits atop the ice, with a line descending into the ocean. A device moves up and down the line, measuring water temperature, salinity, and sometimes oxygen content at various depths, as the floe drifts across the ocean. ITPs have been key instruments for a multi-institutional Arctic observing network that has detected impacts from climate change in the region. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)