Ice Cold

The temperature was -39°F when WHOI engineers John Kemp and Kris Newhall (pictured) and colleagues set up camp on a Beaufort Sea ice floe in March 2014. They were there to install an Ice-Tether Profiler, an instrument developed at WHOI that drifts with sea ice, measuring properties of the ocean below and relaying data back by satellite in near real-time. Most of the measuring is done by a moored profiler, a motorized device shown here that moves up and down a cable hanging from a buoy on the ice. The Navy-funded study is investigating the increasing retreat of sea ice during summer. (Photo by John Kemp, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)