Magnetic resonance measurements of polar sea ice

A Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) sensor system has been developed to measure the brine fraction profile of polar sea ice. The system is based on a 0.3 T Halbach permanent magnet array and has significantly more sensitivity than earlier Earth´s field NMR systems deployed in Antarctica. Brine fraction experiments were performed in November 2009 near Ross Island, Antarctica and the results obtained agreed well with the traditional temperature/salinity determination method. The advantages of the NMR technique are that it is a direct method and it has the ability to obtain data within minutes compared to several hours with the traditional method.