NPEO 2015 Webcam image archive

Images from NPEO 2015 Web Cameras

Deployed at Ice Station Barneo in April 2015.
Image times are not synchronized between the two cameras, but should stay reasonably close.
Position and weather record is available from co-located NPEO 2015 PAWS Buoy 923840.
Please credit:   North Pole Environmental Observatory, National Science Foundation

 

Web Camera #1 is a satellite-reporting camera buoy called Remote Autonomous Camera System (RACS) developed by the Polar Science Center and deployed in pairs beginning in 2012 as part of the NSF-funded North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO). This one was installed in April 2015 at the Barneo ice camp approximately 25 miles from the North Pole. It is meant to give a visual record of ice changes over the spring-summer-fall season. Ablation stakes made of plywood strips 10-cm wide and marked with alternating black and white 10-cm squares are planted in the ice near the buoy to indicate visually the amount of surface melting as the summer proceeds. The camera is a StarDot NetCamXL with a very wide angle lens 120° horizontal field of view, and is mounted about 1.5 m above the April ice surface. Owing to the wide-angle lens, objects in the image are closer to the the camera than they appear.

Web Camera #2 is a second-generation RACS 2.0 Buoy, newly designed and built by the Polar Science Center for the 2015 Arctic field season. It is co-located with Webcam#1 on the same ice floe that was occupied by Barneo, and in fact Webcam#2 is visible near the right edge of the Webcam#1 image. One difference is its NetCamXL has a more standard lens with a narrower 80°field of view. The PAWS Buoy is visible on the left edge of the image and the Ocean Flux Buoy is on the right. This camera also stands about 1.5 m above the April level of the ice surface, and is surrounded with ablation stakes.


NPEO Webcam Images from Previous Years—

NOAA / PMEL Webcam site with Animations and Pre-2012 NPEO images

NPEO 2013 Web Cameras and Summer Melt Ponds

NPEO/IAOOS 2014 Web Cameras cease transmitting early

Complete 2012–2014 image archives from NPEO web cameras