Polar regions are under-sampled due to their remote, harsh, dynamic environments. Long-term attended measurements are impossible due to the weather conditions, and unattended monitoring is hampered by the dynamic environment i.e. when holes in the glacier are cut to deploy instrumentation to monitor the ocean below, the water in the hole quickly refreezes, making it impossible to recover the instruments or data.
RBR has been manufacturing equipment for nearly 50 years and has leveraged this experience to develop tailor-made polar solutions for a number of research organizations. Expanding the capability of their inductive modem system and the RBRcervello, the brains of the operation, RBR has delivered solutions to allow continuous, multi-year, real-time, unattended monitoring in the polar regions.
Efficient electronics and compact sensors, which can operate in freezing temperatures, allows data to be collected over extended periods, i.e. multiyear, at high-temporal resolution. Adding water quality sensors to the RBR CTDs and integrating the Nortek ADCPs to the system, expands the capability of the solution further, broadening the scientific outcomes.
This presentation will focus on the technical developments RBR utilized, the solution delivered, and the increased capability for the research organizations who have recently deployed these systems in the polar regions.