Indian moored observatory in the Arctic for long-term in situ data collection

• Main Authors: R Venkatesan, KP Krishnan, M Arul Muthiah, B Kesavakumar, David T Divya, MA Atmanand, S Rajan, M Ravichandran
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2016-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Ocean and Climate Systems
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/1759313116642898
• ISSN: 1759-3131; 1759-314X

This article describes the first Indian arctic multi-sensor mooring (IndARC) observatory in Kongsfjorden of Arctic waters. The Ministry of Earth Sciences evolved a unique moored observatory ‘IndARC’ with suite of sensors for physico-chemical and oceanographic in situ long-term data collection. The Arctic Ocean plays an important role in governing the earth’s climate and also faithfully records its past climatic history and represents a significant gap in ocean observations. This indigenously designed and installed observatory IndARC, for the first time, collected various parameters from July 2014 to July 2015. The uniqueness of this system, the challenges faced and results from data collected are presented in this article.