An Open Systems Approach to U.S. Ice Forecasting: Present Capabilities and Recommendations

Abstract

A recent publication1 defines organization theory as an emerging discipline, “evolving... extremely complex and fraught with compounding variables....” Nothing could better describe the present state of sea ice observing and forecasting in the U.S. today whether considered in the operational or in its supporting research and development (RD the latter’s most spectacular contribution being the redesign and full-scale model test of SS Manhattan as an icebreaking tanker in her arctic voyages of 1969 and 1970.2 In R&D, too, initial developments were largely operationally supported, but derived also from publications in the international, especially Soviet, scientific literature.3 Strictly arctic sponsorship within the Navy and earmarked especially for the studies of the broad-scale, both in time and space, behavior of sea ice was not forthcoming until the 1960’s. Even then these Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored investigations were largely confined to the Central Arctic Basin, rather than to its marginal seas or marginal ice zone (MIZ) where shipping — and consequently ice forecasting — were applicable. It was nearly 1970 before ONR, followed shortly by the National Science Foundation (NSF), sponsored the initiation of an Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX).4 This was, and is, a first effort to understand the dynamics of the complicated air-ice-other interactions using modern technology. In the U.S., Washington and the Lamont-Doherty Observatory of Columbia University were exceptional in having had significant ONR sponsored basic research, arctic sea ice programs prior to the AIDJEX era. Within the Department of Defense the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratories (CRREL) and the Navy’s Naval Electronics Laboratory — later to become Arctic Submarine Laboratory, Naval Underseas Center, San Diego (ASL-NUC) were also front runners in making useful contributions toward sea ice behavioral knowledge. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) not only participated operationally in these arctic efforts, but also contributed throughout the program development with its ice breakers, aerial observers and some R&D. More detailed, referenced contributions will be disclosed below.