Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility
Abstract
The Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility (SERF) is the first experimental sea-ice facility in Canada. Located in Winnipeg on the campus of the University of Manitoba, the main feature of SERF is an outdoor seawater pool (60 feet long, 30 feet wide and 8 feet deep) with a movable roof, numerous in situ sensors and instruments, and an on site trailer laboratory. Sea ice can be created at the pool under various controlled conditions (e.g., seawater chemistry, snow cover, heating) with the additions of chemical, isotopic and/or microbiological tracers. During the 2011-2012 inaugural year of operation, several types of sea ice including pancake ice and frost flowers were successfully created at the SERF pool. Real-time monitoring was carried out on surface and optical properties and on the evolution of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, alkalinity, pCO2, and mercury in and across the sea ice environment. The results demonstrate that SERF could provide a unique research platform for hypothesis-driven, mesocosm-scale studies to examine geophysical properties and biogeochemical processes in the sea ice environment.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.C43A0578R
- Keywords:
-
- 0750 CRYOSPHERE / Sea ice;
- 0770 CRYOSPHERE / Properties;
- 0792 CRYOSPHERE / Contaminants;
- 0793 CRYOSPHERE / Biogeochemistry