The "Emerging Dynamics of the Marginal Ice Zone" is an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Departmental Research Initiative, or DRI. The goal of this five-year (FY12-FY16) DRI is to improve the knowledge and understanding of the physics of the retreating summer ice edge and MIZ in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
The main field experiment occurred between March and October 2014 in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, and the DRI has now entered the data analysis, synthesis and publication phase. Proposals for additional research on the marginal ice zone are likely to be given a lower program priority than other topics until this DRI concludes at the end of FY16.
Complete information about the MIZ DRI is available at the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory project website. The titles of MIZ DRI awards are listed below:
- MIZMAS: Modeling the Evolution of Ice Thickness and Floe Size Distributions in the MIZ of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas
- Acoustic Communications and Navigation for Mobile Under-Ice Sensors
- Evolution of the MIZ: Adaptive Sampling with Autonomous Gliders
- Marginal Ice Zone: Biogeochemical Sampling with Gliders
- Autonomous Observations of the Upper Ocean Stratification and Velocity Fields about the Seasonally-Retreating MIZ
- Autonomous Profiling Float Measurements of the Ocean Stratification Field within the Seasonally-retreating MIZ
- The Seasonal Evolution of Sea Ice Floe Size Distribution
- Evaluating the Discrete Element Model as a Tool for Predicting the Seasonal Evolution of the MIZ
- The Role of Atmospheric, Ice and Oceanic Interactions in the MIZ
- Coupling of Waves, Turbulence and Thermodynamics across the MIZ
- Wave Interactions and the MIZ
- Waves and Fetch in the MIZ