2022 Arctic Saildrone Cruise Report

Saildrone is a wind and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capable of long distance deployments lasting up to 12 months and providing high quality, near real-time, multivariate surface ocean and atmospheric observations while transiting at typical speeds of 3-5 knots. The drone is autonomous in that it may be guided remotely from land while being completely wind driven. The 2022 Saildrone Arctic campaign deployed two Saildrone unmanned surface vehicles (USV) during a 60-day cruise in the Bering and Chukchi Sea, from 18 June 2022 to 17 August 2022. The overall mission objective for 2022 was to measure atmospheric and oceanographic conditions in Alaskan arctic waters, specifically in collaboration with the Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO). The Saildrones transited to the Bering Strait, separating after reaching Point Hope, AK. SD-1041 then made repeat transects from Point Hope southwestward to near the International Date Line and back again, along DBO line #3. SD-1046 continued north to DBO line #4, and then when the sea ice retreated enough to allow safe passage, north again to DBO line #5. Each Saildrone was equipped to measure air temperature and relative humidity, barometric pressure, surface skin temperature, wind speed and direction, wave height and period, seawater temperature and salinity, chlorophyll fluorescence, and dissolved oxygen. Both vehicles measured near surface currents with 300 kHz acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP). Additionally, seven temperature data loggers were positioned vertically along the hull to provide further information on thermal variability near the ocean surface. This Saildrone Arctic dataset consists of 3 data files for each of the two NASA-funded Saildrones deployed, all in netCDF format and CF/ACDD compliant. One file contains saildrone platform telemetry and surface observational data (air temperature, sea surface skin and bulk temperatures, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll-a concentrations, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction) at 1 minute temporal resolution. The second file contains the ADCP current vector data, depth-resolved to 100m at 2m intervals and binned temporally at 5 minute resolution. The third file contains the temperature logger measurement at different depths at 1 minute resolution. The project, Multi-sensor Improved Sea-Surface Temperature (MISST), is funded by NASA through the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP).