Oceanographer lands $1 million research grant

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
06/15/06

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fairbanks, Alaska--University of Alaska Fairbanks oceanographer Harper Simmons is the recipient of a grant worth more than $1 million to study the effects of sea ice on the motion and mixing of different layers of water in the Arctic Ocean.

The grant, awarded by the Defense Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, will fund the Ice-Covered Ocean Response to Atmospheric Systems study, ICORTAS for short.

Simmons, a research assistant professor at the UAF International Arctic Research Center, is collaborating with a large team of other UAF scientists on the project: William Hibler, Vladimir Ivanov, Jennifer Hutchings, Andrew Roberts, Igor Polyakov, David Atkinson and Igor Dmitrenko. The ICORTAS study will operate in conjunction with IARC’s Nansen and Amundsen Basins Observational System project, known as NABOS, aboard the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn.

ICORTAS will install observational moorings at several locations in the Laptev Sea, off the northern coast of Siberia. The moorings, which are basically buoys that are anchored to the ocean floor and that float about 100 meters below the surface, contain instruments that measure things like ocean current, salinity, sea-ice drift and temperature throughout the different depths of the ocean.

Simmons hopes that the information gleaned from these instruments will help him determine how sea-ice cover affects the way energy from wind is transferred to the middle and lower depths of the ocean.

"I am interested in the way in which atmospheric storm systems break up the ice, set the ice in motion and then in turn set the underlying ocean into motion,"? he said. "The reason we are interested in this is there is a lot of heat in the Arctic Ocean."?

Unlike other oceans throughout the globe, the Arctic Ocean is warmer in mid-depths than it is on the surface, Simmons said. "The motion that results from these storms may be important for stirring up the upper ocean and drawing heat out of the Arctic Ocean."?

And that heat, if released, is enough to melt all of the sea ice in the Arctic. Sea ice is important to the overall understanding of climate change because its presence or lack thereof affects how much solar radiation, and hence heat, is reflected back into space, Simmons said. "A big part of why our planet has the climate it does now is because the Arctic is this seasonally ice-covered ocean."?

Simmons said the moorings will likely be installed next summer.

CONTACT: Assistant Professor Harper Simmons, principal investigator, at (907) 474-5729 or via e-mail at hsimmons@iarc.uaf.edu. Marmian Grimes, UAF public information officer, at (907 474-7902 or via e-mail at marmian.grimes@uaf.edu.