1994 Arctic Ocean Section
Because the yard schedule for the Polar Sea required her to be in Seattle
on 1 October, the route was altered to return directly to the Pacific from
the North Pole, rather than via the Atlantic, that is, crossing the Canada
Basin twice, but with an expected net saving of time.
Thanks to the efforts of a great many caring people, the myriad pieces in
this planning activity all came together, and late in the evening of the 24th of
July 1994 the Louis S. St-Laurent and the Polar Sea steamed northward from
Nome to start the CanadaU.S. 1994 Arctic Ocean Section.
From the beginning the scientific goal of the undertaking had been to sub-
stantially increase the observational base necessary for understanding the role
of the Arctic in global change. The objective was thus to make those measure-
ments that would best promote the analysis and modeling of the biological,
chemical and physical systems related to the Arctic and global change, and the
controlling processes in these systems:
Ocean properties pertinent to understanding circulation and ice cover;
Biological parameters essential for defining the Arctic carbon cycle;
Geological observations necessary for understanding past climates;
Concentration and distribution of contaminants that impact the food
chain and the environment;
Physical properties and variability of the ice cover; and
Atmospheric and upper ocean chemistry and physics relevant to climate.
In the following chapters, we shall see how all this came out.
Knut Aagaard
Chief Scientist, AOS-94
Applied Physics Laboratory
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington, USA
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