Application of a low cost instrumentation in Arctic extreme conditions

The Arctic is recognized to be strongly affected by global warming, experiencing a reduction of about 40% in sea-ice thickness during late summer to early autumn in recent decades. The Arctic Ocean has a great influence on the earth’s climate, however it is still a significant gap in the Global Observing System. For this reason a large amounts of data are required to monitor the variation of physical and biological parameters and to feed forecasting models, in order to better understand the effects of environmental changes on arctic marine ecosystems. The development of flexible, adaptable and low-cost instrumentation plays a key role in marine environmental studies. This is particularly true if we consider an extreme environment like the Arctic Ocean, where oceanographic instrumentation has to solve a series of technical challenges and barriers. Within this scenario a miniaturized and flexible probe was developed to be easily integrated in different type of platforms. This probe is able to acquire temperature, pressure, fluorescence of chlorophyll a, beyond pitch, roll and acceleration. This work shows the preliminary integration of this technology to an experimental remotely operated underwater and semi-submersible vehicle in the Svalbard area, during survey carried out in the framework of the UVASS (Unmanned Vehicles for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling) research project.