--FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--
November 24, 2010
Contact: Tatiana Brailovskaya, Director of Communications, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, (207) 633-9633; tbrailovskaya@bigelow.org
BIGELOW LABORATORY DEPLOYS NEW INSTRUMENT BUOY IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN
WEST BOOTHBAY HARBOR, ME -- Bigelow Senior Research Associate Carlton Rauschenberg, a member of Dr. Paty Matrai’s Ocean and Atmospheric Chemistry research team, has just completed a 34-day expedition to the Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic Ocean. Rauschenberg and 24 other scientists from the United States, Canada, and Japan joined the Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, a remote Inuit hamlet in the Canadian Arctic.
Rauschenberg’s part in the expedition was to assemble and deploy an autonomous buoy for atmospheric chemistry measurements, part of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded O-Buoy Network. This is the fourth successful deployment of an O-Buoy in a multi-year ice flow in the last two years. The first O-Buoy was also located in the Beaufort Gyre in 2009; the next two were deployed by Environment Canada in spring 2010 in the Canadian Arctic. The goal of the O-Buoy project is to understand the behavior of ozone and carbon dioxide, two of the most important greenhouse gases, and bromine oxide, a key catalyst in the cycling of ozone and mercury.
In addition to atmospheric chemistry measurements, the O-Buoy network also records meteorological data, all of which are sent back daily via satellite to be processed and made available to the public. NSF has provided funding for Matrai and colleagues from the U. S. Army Cold Region Environmental Laboratory, Monterey Bay Research Institute, Purdue University, and University of Alaska-Fairbanks to deploy eleven additional O-Buoys over the next four years to measure changes in atmospheric conditions over the Arctic Ocean.
An internationally known global ocean research center since 1974, research at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ranges from microbial oceanography to large-scale biogeochemical processes that drive interactions between ocean ecosystems and global environmental conditions.####
Photo: Rauschenberg with O-Buoy 4.