This data set contains photographs of camps on drifting sea ice from the early 1970s along with a few aerial photographs of the drifting ice station T-3. Most of the photos were taken during a pilot study conducted in 1972 in preparation for the AIDJEX main experiment of 1975 to 1976. There are 83 photos in JPEG format with captions available for 60 of them, which are listed in an accompanying Excel (.xlsx) file. The photos were taken by Tom Marlar of the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). Pat Martin took the aerial photographs.

The pilot study included a main camp on drifting sea ice in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska along with two satellite camps forming a station triangle with a 100 km side length. Additional details on the AIDJEX experiment can be found on the NOAA@NSIDC AIDJEX web site. Also, a detailed description of the observational program and a running account of the results can be found in the AIDJEX Bulletin series published between 1970 and the end of the project in 1978. The Polar Science Center at the University of Washington maintains an AIDJEX electronic library at http://psc.apl.washington.edu/nonwp_projects/aidjex/. It includes downloadable copies of the contents of all 40 AIDJEX Bulletins, AIDJEX Operations Manuals for the Pilot Study and the Main Experiment, and other resources.

These photographs existed as 8” x 10” prints in the analog collection of material at NSIDC, and were scanned under the direction of the NSIDC archivist around 2007. The captions come from text that was written on the prints. Some captions may have been added to at a later date.

At least four of the photographs are not from AIDJEX, but are aerial photographs of Fletcher’s Ice Island, or T-3. In 1972, when the AIDJEX pilot study was taking place in the Beaufort Sea, T-3 was north of the Canadian Archipelago and on its way East, as explained in the caption for AIDJEX_1972_002.jpg. According to the captions, the T-3 photos were taken in 1974. We believe that these photographs, like other aerial shots, were taken by Pat Martin, and included with other 8” x 10” prints that may have been sent to NSIDC by personnel at CRREL.

The track of T-3, as well as data from T-3 and other drifting ice stations, can be found on the EWG Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas