Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
(NSIDC,
1996
; Arctic Climatology Project,
2000
) that continue to be widely used.
The U.S. Air Force established the ice island station T-3 in March 1952 through
the initiative of J. Fletcher. L. Koenig and his colleagues (
1952
) recognized ice
islands such as T-3 as fragments that break off the Ward Hunt ice shelf of northern
Ellesmere Island (Hattersley-Smith, Crary, and Christie,
1955
). These may circulate
for many years in the Beaufort Sea gyre (Montgomery,
1952
). Most of the Russian
NP stations have been on thick ice floes rather than ice islands such as T-3.
There were new glaciological and meteorological expeditions on the Greenland
Ice Sheet. Notable ones included the 1948-1951 Expeditions Polaires Francaises led
by P.E. Victor in southern and central Greenland and the British North Greenland
Expedition of 1952-1954. The former expedition operated Station Centrale at
70.9°N, 40.6°W (2993 m) during 1949-1950 near the site of Eismitte, while the
latter established Northice at 78.1°N, 38.5°W (2343m). Also, the Arctic Institute of
North America sponsored studies on the Barnes and Penny ice caps of Baffin Island
in the early 1950s (Orvig,
1954
).
Following World War II, it was decided to hold an International Geophysical
Year, July 1957 to December 1958. Considerable emphasis was put on Antarctic
observations that had not previously been possible, but some specific programs
were carried out in the Arctic. For example, McGill University operated the first
station in the interior of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago at Lake Hazen, Ellesmere
Island (Jackson,
1959a
). Soviet scientific expeditions were mounted to study the
glacial meteorology of the ice caps of Franz Josef Land (Krenke,
1961
).
In the mid-1970s, the Defense Research Board of Canada supported further work
on Ellesmere Island (Hattersley-Smith,
1974
). Exploration for oil and gas off the
north coast of Alaska led to intensive studies of the near-shore marine environ-
ment. The Offshore Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Project resulted
in numerous publications which added much to our knowledge of near-shore sea
ice, ocean, and climate conditions. The British Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1968-
1969 led by Wally Herbert, with glaciologist Roy (Fritz) Koerner, provided valuable
information on Arctic Ocean ice conditions (Koerner,
1970
).
The first submarine transect under the Arctic sea ice cover, from north of Alaska,
along longitude 155°W to the Pole, and then to the Fram Strait, was carried out in
August 1958 by the U.S. nuclear submarine
Nautilus
. It was in large part a display
of Cold-War power. A repeat cruise was undertaken by the
USS Queenfish
in August
1970, but the detailed sonar data on sea ice drafts from the two cruises were not
available to the scientific community until 1986, when they were analyzed for a
doctoral dissertation by A.S. McLaren (
1989
), former commander of the
Queenfish.
.
The first submarine to surface at the North Pole was the
USS Skate
in 1959.
The SubmarineArctic Science Program, SCICEX, was launched in 1994. SCICEX
is a federal interagency collaboration among the U.S. Navy, research agencies, and
the marine research community to use nuclear-powered submarines for scientific
studies of the Arctic Ocean. After a test voyage in 1993, in which civilian scientists
joined Navy personnel, five dedicated science cruises took place between 1995 and
1999. Since then, there have been Science Accommodation Missions, facilitated by
