Researchers to map Beaufort Sea, Cook Inlet currents

Submitted by Carla Browning
Phone: (907) 474-7778
01/25/05

Beaufort Sea, Alaska--Associate Professor of physical oceanography Dave Musgrave will lead a Minerals Management Service-funded project to use high-frequency doppler radar to produce two-dimensional maps of sea surface currents in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and Cook Inlet.

The maps will provide scientists with important baseline information about the oceanography of the two regions, as well as provide tools to track and help clean up oil spills that might occur.

The ocean current mapping project is part of the Sea-Air-Land Modeling and Observing Network (SALMON) Project, a program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences that fosters the implementation and operation of ocean-observing systems in the Northern Gulf of Alaska.

The SALMON Project, in cooperation with other institutes, provides continuous real-time or near real-time observations of ocean circulation and ecosystems and linking these with models to provide ocean forecasts in much the same way that weather forecasts are made.

Visit UAF’s School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences website for more information.