Category Archives: Webcams

O-Buoy 14 Awakens in the Heart of the Northwest Passage

Enough sunlight is now reaching O-Buoy 14 for it to power up briefly every day after a long sleep through the Arctic winter blackness:

OBuoy14-battery-voltage-2weeks

The buoy’s position has suddenly been revealed deep into the Northwest Passage after driting a considerable distance whilst out of radio contact:

OBuoy14-20170221-Location

Not only that, but the ice on the buoy’s camera has melted enough to reveal a distant horizon:

O-Buoy 14 image from February 21st 2017
O-Buoy 14 image from February 21st 2017

 

[Edit – February 24th]

The glaze over the webcam’s lens is gradually melting:

OBuoy14-20170224-2201

As suggested by “Oale” below, here’s the CIS ice chart for the Canadian Arctic Archipelago:

CIS-CAA-SoD-20170220

 

[Edit – February 25th]

O-Buoy 14 is waking up earlier each day, and the view is getting clearer too:

OBuoy14-20170225-1701

OBuoy14-20170225-2201

 

[Edit – February 26th]

The lens of O-Buoy 14’s has cleared, resulting in some very pretty pictures being beamed back to base:

OBuoy14-20170226-1901

OBuoy14-20170226-2301

 

[Edit – February 28th]

There’s now enough energy stored in O-Buoy 14’s batteries when the sun is above the horizon to keep her operating into the long nights:

OBuoy14-battery-voltage-20170228

Watch this space!

North Pole Webcam Begins Transmissions

Construction of Ice Camp Barneo 2014 began close to the North Pole at the beginning of April, and now the first scientific data has started flowing  from the sea ice near the Pole. The first of three webcams has been successfully  installed on the ice, and the slightly noisy initial images are available from the North Pole Environmental Observatory 2014 web site:

NPEO webcam 1 image from April 14th 2014
NPEO webcam 1 image from April 14th 2014

Data is now also arriving from ice mass balance buoy 2014E, which as you can see if you click on the pushpins on the map below, has been drifting at the rate of 16 km / day during its brief lifetime on the Arctic sea ice so far:

Here’s the initial temperature profile for 2014E:

Temperature profiles for ice mass balance buoy 2014E from April to May 2014At present the ice on the floe is 1.7 m thick, covered with 19 cm of snow. As you can see, temperatures were a touch chilly when the buoy was installed on April 12th, at around -32 degrees Celsius. A variety of expeditions have already set off from Barneo in various directions. Expedition Hope are heading in the direction of Cape Discovery on Ellesmere Island, and here Bernice Nootenboom illustrates the effects of such low temperatures on the human body:

Bernice Nootenboom near the North Pole. Photo: Martin Hartley
Bernice Nootenboom near the North Pole. Photo: Martin Hartley

You can also view data from IMB 2014E and the other active ice mass balance buoys on our IMB overview page.