Long-time Observations
The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Norwegian Polar Institute perform longterm monitoring studies in Fram Strait to obtain volume- and energy-budgets through this choke point. The observations also allow to assess the development of the Arctic Ocean as a sink for terrestrial organic carbon. The AWI maintains a transect of up to 16 moorings across Fram Strait since 1997 with a longitudinal spacing of roughly 25 km. In up to five different depths, the water velocity is observed using rotor current meters. Additional CTD-sensors log the temperature and the salinity of the water column. The costs of a mooring are high (around 50 k€), but the most expensive part of the monitoring is the deployment and recovery of the moorings, a single day of RV Polarstern costs more than 50 k€.
Read more about this topic: Fram Strait
Famous quotes containing the word observations:
“The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)