Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Russia. In addition to the ship observations, we have developed and deployed fully automated drifting buoys, Ice-Ocean Environmental Buoy (IOEB), in cooperation with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The IOEB is a multi-sensor, real-time, telemetering ice-ocean buoy (Fig.1). It is equipped with the meteorological sensors, ice sensors and physical and bio-geochemical oceanographic sensors, and is capable of long-term observation of Arctic air, ice and upper ocean in synchronized time-series. Its observation data have provided several new findings about oceanic structure of the upper Arctic Ocean (Honjo et al.,1995; Plueddemann et al., 1998; Shimada et al., 1998). We are confident that the multi-deployment of automated drifting buoys like IOEB makes it possible to carry out basin-scale observations over all seasons. JAMSTEC is planning to develop a next-generation Arctic Ocean drifting buoy. Our design concept is that the buoy is equipped with limited sensors, so that it is small, light weighted and low costs (Fig. 2). We believe that multi-deployment of next-generation Arctic Ocean drifting buoy will establish a buoy network for continuous and long-term observations of the upper 200-300m layer of the Arctic Ocean.
When we take into account that the frequency of Arctic missions by US nuclear submarines declines and with continuation of the SCICEX program uncertain, the need for development of long-range Autonomous
