Icewaveguide expedition to Svalbard: listening to the murmurs of the Arctic sea ice

Will the murmurs of the sea ice allow us to better predict its evolution at the North Pole?

The sea ice is disappearing with global warming, and if the trend is clear over the last few decades, scientists are still wondering about the speed of this disappearance, which seems much faster than models predict.

To better assess the quality of polar ice (its thickness, degree of fracturing), a team of ISTerre scientists led by Ludovic Moreau is leading a reconnaissance and test expedition in February and March 2019. Objective: listen to the natural vibrations of the sea ice to deduce its mechanical characteristics (thickness, strength...). A pilot site has been identified in Svalbard, at 78°N latitude, closest to the Arctic sea ice. 250 seismic sensors (seismometers) from RESIF’s SISMOB mobile instrument park will be installed there for one month to record the vibrations and murmurs of this small ephemeral sea ice (it only forms a few months a year) in the Sveagruva fjord.

Guided wave signal in the ice. High frequencies come before low frequencies, a typical waveguide behaviour, which will allow the properties of the ice to be estimated
Credits: Eric Larose et Marc de Langenhagen

If successful, the experiment ICEWAVEGUIDE could be scaled up to sea ice directly at the North Pole and better predict the gradual disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

***To know more

– Read the article (in french) on the EchoSciences Grenoble website