The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (WAGB 20) and embarked researchers completed the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Mission 2023 and maintenance of the Nansen and Amundsen Basin Observing System (NABOS) on Saturday.
The goal of the month-long mission was to recover, maintain and replace a series of nine long-term underground berths that surrounded the Siberian Shelf from the Eurasian Basin to the East Siberian Sea.
These moorings provide insight into how warm water from the Atlantic Ocean enters the Arctic and impacts the deep basin interior, upper ocean and sea ice as it circulates in the region and beyond.
In addition, Healy is specifically equipped to conduct conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) measurements, which sample the water column in areas that are normally inaccessible due to pack ice. During this month-long mission, the cutter made 41 such drops.
Since its inception in 2002, the primary goal of the NSF-funded NABOS project has been to gain a better understanding of the circulation and transformation of Atlantic waters in the Arctic Ocean. The goal of the 2021 to 2025 missions is to quantify the role of freshwater as a regulator of heat transfer from Atlantic waters to sea ice, said project leader Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
With these observations, NABOS aims to inform the scientific community and the public about the possible impacts on Arctic sea ice cover and marine ecosystems, as well as the increasing impacts on mid-latitudes. Since its inception, the success of NABOS has always depended on international partnerships, researchers with diverse backgrounds and resources like Healy to achieve the results for which the project is known.
Healy is the Coast Guard’s only research icebreaker and the nation’s only surface fleet that routinely operates in the Arctic Ocean. The platform is ideally specialized for projects such as NABOS; Providing access to the most remote parts of the Arctic Ocean; Areas barricaded by pack ice and insurmountable for most research vessels.
Commissioned in 1999, the Healy is one of two active polar icebreakers and is the Coast Guard’s largest and most technologically advanced icebreaker. The Healy’s 84-man crew supports the ship’s primary mission of scientific support.
Read more at USCG
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