Development of a second-generation Ice Tethered Profiler with velocity sensor

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has developed Ice Tethered Profilers (ITP) with velocity sensors to measure mean current vs. depth and the turbulent flux beneath the ice of momentum, heat, and salinity. The ITP climbs up and down a mooring hanging under the Arctic ice sheet. After a profile, the data is sent up the mooring cable with an inductive modem and telemetered back to shore with an Iridium modem. The first deployment showed larger measured velocity noise than desired due to wakes of the velocity sensor advecting though the sensed volume and the amount of data sent back was very large. The two goals of the present development are to reduce the self-generated noise in measured velocity and reduce the bandwidth of data sent back without compromising the data quality.