The multi-purpose research ship Alliance in recent days it has temporarily suspended operations north of the Arctic Circle, near the east coast of Greenland and made a brief stop in the Icelandic port of Isafjordur from 24 to 26 February to allow the alternation of part of the team researchers on-board science.
Thus ended the first phase of the naval campaign in favor of scientists from NATO's Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the latter coming from 8 different countries and belonging to different organizations, who to date they have operated between the seas of Iceland and Greenland, supported by the Navy personnel on board the Alliance under the command of frigate captain Daniele Cantù, to study the air / water interaction and the relative ventilation that is to create in that area of the world, with the aim of achieving a better understanding of the circulation of sea currents.
In the sea areas explored to date, characterized by ice and low temperatures, typical of the Arctic winter, numerous measurements of electrical conductivity parameters such as temperature, depth, geochemical analyzes and speed of sound in the water, thermographic, bathymetry measurements and meteorological measurements (marine and air), as well as carrying out the correlation and statistical collection of the acquired data, as part of the Iceland-Greenland Seas Project - IGP multidisciplinary program
"Among the instruments used there is a meteorological buoy, released in the area to detect meteorological and marine data to support CTD activity (surveys and measurements of electrical conductivity, temperature and depth of the water) and some semi-autonomous vehicles submerged remotely called ocean gliders, which have the function of measuring the sea currents and the characteristics that make up the various layers of the Arctic Ocean during this mission that will soon see us engaged in a second equally demanding operational window lasting about 25 days, before returning to Italy "underlined the captain Massimiliano Nannini, head of mission of the Navy.
