Davis Strait 2022

This project will renew the integrated observational program at Davis Strait, delivering data to the community and matching ongoing collections at Bering Strait, Utqiagvik, Alaska, and Fram Strait to extend the time series of concurrent measurements across the major Arctic Gateways. The extended timeseries will document changes in freshwater and heat fluxes, and will be combined with numerical modeling to investigate the processes that control variability in the strait and the potential impacts. The backbone system relies on the tested combination of moorings instrumented with sensors to measure ice thickness and motion, ocean currents, temperature and salinity, and biennial ship-based sampling of chemical and biological properties that have successfully delivered core measurements for the past decade. Bottom pressure sensors augment the system to quantify sea surface height gradients, which will support investigations of the primary forcing mechanisms. Integrated marine ecosystem observing includes biogeochemical and marine mammal passive acoustic measurements augmented with tracking of key fish species, and zooplankton and phytoplankton observations. These observations will launch the Davis Strait/Baffin Bay Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO) in Davis Strait, complementing the developing Atlantic DBO that includes transect lines in Fram Strait and Barents Sea, and the existing Pacific DBO in the northern Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.