Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment (BREA) - Marine Observatories mooring data in the Canadian Arctic

ArcticNet and IMG-Golder established southern and eastern Beaufort Sea Marine Observatories in 2011. The first pair of moorings (BRA and BRB) is in the southern Beaufort Sea, roughly 100 nautical miles northwest of Tuktoyaktuk. These deployments aimed at maintaining the existing ArcticNet time series initiated in 2009 in collaboration with Imperial Oil and BP. The second observatory, also deployed in 2011, consisted of two moorings (BR1 and BR2) north of the Mackenzie Trough at the western limit of the Beaufort Sea. Another pair of moorings BRG and BRK, launched in 2012 and 2014, are located off the northwest coast of Banks Island, starting a time series in the northeastern Beaufort Sea where year-round measurements have never been obtained before. Finally, two new moorings (BR3 and BR4) were also deployed at the end of the program in 2014 near BR2 and BRG respectively. For every year of deployment, each mooring line was equipped with various oceanographic instruments attached at different depths from approximately 150 m to 750 m. Moored instruments included conductivity-temperature sensors, ice profiling sonars, particle analyzers, current meters, current profilers, and sediment traps. Datasets include currents, ice draft and velocities, water levels, temperature, salinity and turbidity, chlorophyll, suspended particulate size and concentration, and vertical carbon flux; See CCIN10476 for Vertical flux data on Phyto and Zooplankton as well as on chemical parameters such as POC. Data are quality assessed/quality controlled (QA/QC) following the Climate and Forecast (CF http://cfconventions.org/) conventions and building upon the open-source Integrated Marine Observatory System (IMOS) toolbox developed for Matlab© by the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN). The five moorings provided ready to use quality data for the period 2011-2015. BRG and BR1 time series were extended along with two moorings BR3 and BRK until 2018 during the iBO project (CCIN 13107).