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.