The use of autonomous underwater vehicles to map the variability of under-ice topography

Abstract

We review the development of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) use under sea ice to map the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of the ice underside. The author, after extensive experience in under-ice profiling from submarines using single-beam sonar, carried out the first under-ice sidescan sonar profiling from an AUV in 2002 in the Greenland Sea. This was followed in August 2004 by the first full multibeam sonar experiment, using Kongsberg EM2000 sonar aboard the Autosub-II vehicle off NE Greenland. Two experiments using a small Gavia vehicle deployed through holes in the ice followed in 2007 and 2008, in the Beaufort Sea and off Ellesmere Island. Examples of the 3-D imagery are shown, and the two approaches of using a large vehicle deployed from a ship and a small through-ice vehicle are compared and found to be complementary. The imagery has shown that although first-year (FY) ridges have the familiar shape of a triangular prism made of small ice blocks, multi-year (MY) ridges are found to be broken up by lead formation into a chain of individual large ice blocks rather than a coherent linear feature. New work and future plans are described.