Created April 3, 2026
Updated on April 3, 2026
This dataset comprises measurements from moored Acustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), collected by the S1 Mooring, which is managed by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR) and National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS). The data was gathered on the Fram Strait south of the Spitsbergen in an open-sea area strongly influenced by both the interaction between Atlantic (northward-moving) and Arctic (southward-moving) waters as well as by the presence and winter formation of sea ice and atmospheric forcing. The easternmost part of the Fram Strait, relatively warm and salty Atlantic waters flow, bringing heat to the Arctic region and contributing to the Atlantification phenomenon. The processes responsible of the inter-annual and seasonal variability of the deep current flow in this open sea region are still unknown and also what the implications are related to ongoing climate change and in particular to the progressive decrease of sea ice cover in the winter period. To understand these dynamics, a deep-water oceanographic S1 Mooring was anchored at about 1040 meters depth, since June 2014. The dataset is also part of the SIOS-Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, developed to observe the impacts of climate change, including the rapid loss of sea ice cover, the retreat of local glaciers, and the Atlantification of Arctic seas. The ADCP mounted at 420 m measure: sea-water currents intensity and direction along the water column. The acquisition of this time series data is still ongoing and will continue, bolstered by the inclusion of this infrastructure within the framework of the Italian PNRR project ITINERIS. This ensures sustained data collection and further enhances our understanding of the observed environmental changes.
