2019 Arctic Saildrone Cruise Report

The Saildrone vehicles collected data on a 150-day cruise from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, within the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the ice edge and back during 15 May 2019 to 11 October 2019. Scientific objectives include collecting upper ocean temperature profiles with a full suite of ocean measurements, which could lead to significant improvements in modeling of diurnal warming. Additionally, these new data will provide additional Arctic SST observations to benefit SST algorithm development and validation, and collected additional data for studies of air- sea-ice interactions. The vehicles first encountered the ice edge around 15 June 2019 and by the beginning of August 2019 low power levels due to lack of sunlight resulted in payloads being turned off or reduced sampling intervals