Polar Ocean Profiling System (POPS)

Development of JAMSTEC Compact Arctic Drifter (J-CAD) began in 1999 in collaboration with METOCEAN (Hatakeyama and Monk, 2001). Since 2000, the J-CADs have been deployed in the multiyear ice area of the Arctic Ocean once or twice a year, to understand the going Arctic Ocean change. We have been sampling a broad suite of oceanographic and atmospheric data from the Arctic multiyear ice region (e.g., Kikuchi and Hosono, 2004). Recent results from the J-CAD observation have highlighted not only interannual variability of oceanographic condition (Kikuchi et al., 2004; 2005), but also atmospheric forcing on ice and ice-albedo feedback (Inoue et al., 2005; Inoue and Kikuchi, 2006). Based on J-CAD successful performance, JAMSTEC and METOCEAN started collaboration again in the development of a new buoy system tethering an Argo float. The new buoy is named as Polar Ocean Profiling System, POPS.