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GOMO-Funded Project

Coordination and Data Management of the U.S Interagency Arctic Buoy Program (IABP)

  • Principal Investigator(s):
  • Project Institution(s): University of Washington
  • Fiscal Year: 2023
  • Award Period:
    10/01/2021 - 09/30/2022
  • Partners and Affiliations PSC/APL/UW, CICOES, NSF

Providing fundamental observations of sea ice, surface meteorology, and oceanography to improve weather forecast and understand Arctic climate

The U.S Interagency Arctic Buoy Program (IABP) strives to maintain a network of buoys with a spacing of less than 250 km, or more than 200 buoys spread across the Arctic Ocean. These buoys are essential for predicting weather and temperature anomalies, which rely on in-situ observations of surface meteorology and oceanography. Collected observations  are also used for Numerical Weather Prediction models to forecast weather and sea ice conditions, contribute to long-term atmospheric reanalysis data useful for multiple climate studies, validate satellite-derived estimates of sea ice motion, temperature, sea ice thickness, etc., among other uses. These observations provide the longest continuing record for the Arctic and have been one of the cornerstones for environmental forecasting and studies of climate and climate change.

Project Website

Project Gallery

Arctic Observing Experiment (AOX) IABP buoy test site at the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement in Utqiagvik, Alaska on January 25, 2021 as the sun first rose from the polar night.
SVP-B and Ice Ball deployed at the North Pole by the scientists and crew aboard the Le Commandant Charcot.
Map of buoys reporting from the Arctic Ocean on October 21, 2022.
A map of the standard deviation of sea level pressure measurements from various atmospheric reanalysis.
Map of all observations available on the WMO/IOC GTS on November 30, 2022.

Project Data

About The IABP Database

Buoy data files are updated daily and made available individually via the links below. Values provided are confined to surface temperature, atmospheric temperature, and barometric pressure when these values are available. All buoy files contain at least a date and position. Buoys that are no longer reporting remain available on the main IABP data website:

Publications and Reports

  • FULL PROJECT PUBLICATIONS LISTAccess
  • Brunette, C., Tremblay, L. B., & Newton, R. (2022). A new state-dependent parameterization for the free drift of sea ice. The Cryosphere, 16(2), 533-557Access
  • de Aguiar, V., Dagestad, K. F., Hole, L. R., & Barthel, K. (2022). Quantitative assessment of two oil-in-ice surface drift algorithms. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 175, 113393Access
  • Faybishenko, B., Versteeg, R., Pastorello, G., Dwivedi, D., Varadharajan, C., & Agarwal, D. (2022). Challenging problems of quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) of meteorological time series data. Stochastic environmental research and risk assessment, 36(4), 1049-1062.Access
  • Garcia-Soto, C, L. Cheng, L. Caesar, L. Jewett, A. Cheripika, I. Rigor, A. Caballero, J. Abraham, S. Chiva, J.C. Báez, T. Zielinski, An update on Ocean Climate Indicators: Sea Surface Temperature, Ocean Heat Content, Ocean PH, Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Sea Level and strength of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), Frontiers of Marine Science, 2021.Access
  • Garcia-Soto, Cc; Contributors: L. Caesar, A. Cazenave, L. Cheng, A. Cheripka, P. Durack, D. Halpern, L. Jewett, G. Li, I. Rigor, S. Schmidtko, and T. Zielinski, Chapter 5: Trends in the Physical and Chemical State of the Ocean, Second World Ocean Assessment, United Nations, 2021.Access
  • Howell, S. E., Brady, M., & Komarov, A. S. (2022). Generating large-scale sea ice motion from Sentinel-1 and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission using the Environment and Climate Change Canada automated sea ice tracking system. The Cryosphere, 16(3), 1125-1139.Access
  • Jewell, M. E. (2022). Atmospheric and Sea Ice Circulation Patterns During Lead Formation at Point Barrow. M.S. Thesis, Oregon State University.Access
  • Lygre, K., Røsvik, B. H., Storheim, E., Forcucci, D., Rigor, I., Langehaug, H. R., … & Pettersson, L. H. (2021). Float Your Boat-Norway. School students, small wooden boats and marine research in the Arctic (No. EGU21-16269). Copernicus Meetings.Access
  • Melling, H. (2022). Sea-ice thickness on the northern Canadian polar shelf: A second look after 40 years. The Cryosphere Discussions, 1-24.Access
  • Morison, J., R. Kwok, and I. Rigor. 2022. Changes in Arctic Ocean circulation from in situ and remotely sensed observations: Synergies and sampling challenges. Oceanography, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2022.111.Access
  • Morison J., R. Kwok, S. Dickinson, R. Andersen, C. Peralta-Ferriz, D. Morison, I. Rigor, S. Dewey, and J. Guthrie, The Cyclonic Mode of Arctic Ocean Circulation, J. Phys. Oceanography, Oceanography, 51, 1053– 1075. https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0190.1, 2021.Access
  • Nicolaus, M., Perovich, D. K., Spreen, G., Granskog, M. A., von Albedyll, L., Angelopoulos, M., … & Wendisch, M. (2022). Overview of the MOSAiC expedition: Snow and sea ice. Elem Sci Anth, 10(1), 000046.Access
  • Obbard, R.W, A.C. Bradley, I. Rigor, Remotely monitored buoys for observing the growth and development of sea ice in situ, accepted, J. Atmos. and Ocean Tech, 2022.Access
  • Sumata, H., de Steur, L., Gerland, S., Divine, D. V., & Pavlova, O. (2022). Unprecedented decline of Arctic sea ice outflow in 2018. Nature communications, 13(1), 1-11.Access
  • Sun, W., Yang, Y., Chao, L., Dong, W., Huang, B., Jones, P., & Li, Q. (2022). Description of the China global Merged Surface Temperature version 2.0. Earth System Science Data, 14(4), 1677-1693.Access
  • Turnbull, I. D., & Marchenko, A. V. (2022). Deformation of an ice pack influenced by waves and topographic enhancement of tidal motion near Hopen Island in the Barents Sea. Cold Regions Science and Technology, 194, 103463.Access
  • Wang, X., Chen, R., Li, C., Chen, Z., Hui, F., & Cheng, X. (2022). An Intercomparison of Satellite Derived Arctic Sea Ice Motion Products. Remote Sensing, 14(5), 1261.Access
  • Webster, M.A., I. Rigor, and N.C. Wright. 2022. Observing Arctic sea ice. Oceanography, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2022.115.Access
  • Wu, A., Che, T., Li, X., & Zhu, X. (2022). A ship navigation information service system for the Arctic Northeast Passage using 3D GIS based on big Earth data. Big Earth Data, 1-27.Access
  • Yu, X., Liu, C., Wang, X., Cao, J., Dong, J., & Liu, Y. (2022). Evaluation of Arctic Sea Ice Drift and its Relationship with Near-surface Wind and Ocean Current in Nine CMIP6 Models from China. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 1-24.Access
  • Zhang, F., Pang, X., Lei, R., Zhai, M., Zhao, X., & Cai, Q. (2022). Arctic sea ice motion change and response to atmospheric forcing between 1979 and 2019. International Journal of Climatology, 42(3), 1854-1876.Access