| Description | Abstract:
The Arctic environment is harsh and difficult to operate in, but observations are critically important for climate change studies and forecast models. Batteries drain quickly in the cold temperatures and observational data are currently limited by battery lifetimes and expensive ship time to deploy, service, or retrieve instruments. Increased power availability would enable more frequent observations or lengthen instrument measurement times. Marine renewable energy technologies could be used for in-situ power generation, but they are not yet widely used in the Arctic. Wave energy converters, low velocity turbines, and vortex induced vibration instruments developed to operate in the harsh Arctic conditions would enable more data collection, improve our understanding of the rapidly changing environment, and support increased future maritime usage of the region. Speaker Bio:
Ruth Branch is a postdoctoral researcher in the Coastal Sciences Division of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She manages the Arctic Observations task within the Powering the Blue Economy initiative. She graduated from the University of Washington with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering and prior to that worked in the Polar Science and Air-Sea Interaction and Remote Sensing groups at the Applied Physics Lab. |
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