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Sarah Webster

Principal Engineer and Assistant Director for Engagement and Development

Email

swebster@apl.washington.edu

Phone

206-543-1256

Research Interests

Navigation of underwater vehicles – Decentralized estimation – Distributed sensor networks – Scalable navigation algorithms for multiple robotic vehicles

Biosketch

Dr. Webster earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2000, after which she worked at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the Deep Submergence Laboratory. While there she designed excavation tools for the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Hercules to carry out archaeological excavations of shipwrecks, and was part of the ROV Jason operations team. 

She returned to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in 2004, where she led the design of an acoustic communication system for combined communication and navigation on underwater vehicles, earning an M.S. (2007) and Ph.D. (2010), both in Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Webster spent a year and a half working as a systems engineer on the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, DC. before moving to the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, where she is currently a Senior Research Engineer, working on long-range navigation, glider-based navigation, and autonomy, particularly for Arctic applications.

Education

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000

M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2007

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2010

Publications

2000-present and while at APL-UW

Formation and fate of freshwater on an ice floe in the Central Arctic

Smith, M.M., and 8 others including M. Webster, "Formation and fate of freshwater on an ice floe in the Central Arctic," Cryosphere, 19, 619-644, doi:10.5194/tc-19-619-2025, 2025.

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7 Feb 2025

The melt of snow and sea ice during the Arctic summer is a significant source of relatively fresh meltwater. The fate of this freshwater, whether in surface melt ponds or thin layers underneath the ice and in leads, impacts atmosphere–ice–ocean interactions and their subsequent coupled evolution. Here, we combine analyses of datasets from the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition (June–July 2020) for a process study on the formation and fate of sea ice freshwater on ice floes in the Central Arctic. Our freshwater budget analyses suggest that a relatively high fraction (58%) is derived from surface melt. Additionally, the contribution from stored precipitation (snowmelt) outweighs by 5 times the input from in situ summer precipitation (rain). The magnitude and rate of local meltwater production are remarkably similar to those observed on the prior Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) campaign, where the cumulative summer freshwater production totaled around 1 m during both. A relatively small fraction (10%) of freshwater from melt remains in ponds, which is higher on more deformed second-year ice (SYI) compared to first-year ice (FYI) later in the summer. Most meltwater drains laterally and vertically, with vertical drainage enabling storage of freshwater internally in the ice by freshening brine channels. In the upper ocean, freshwater can accumulate in transient meltwater layers on the order of 0.1 to 1 m thick in leads and under the ice. The presence of such layers substantially impacts the coupled system by reducing bottom melt and allowing false bottom growth; reducing heat, nutrient, and gas exchange; and influencing ecosystem productivity. Regardless, the majority fraction of freshwater from melt is inferred to be ultimately incorporated into the upper ocean (75%) or stored internally in the ice (14%). Terms such as the annual sea ice freshwater production and meltwater storage in ponds could be used in future work as diagnostics for global climate and process models. For example, the range of values from the CESM2 climate model roughly encapsulate the observed total freshwater production, while storage in melt ponds is underestimated by about 50%, suggesting pond drainage terms as a key process for investigation.

Acoustic arrival predictions using oceanographic measurements and models in the Beaufort Sea

Desrochers, J.B., L.J. Uffelen, and S.E. Webster, "Acoustic arrival predictions using oceanographic measurements and models in the Beaufort Sea," JASA Express Lett., 4, doi:10.1121/10.0025133, 2024.

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25 Mar 2024

Acoustic propagation in the Beaufort Sea is particularly sensitive to upper-ocean sound-speed structure due to the presence of a subsurface duct known as the Beaufort duct. Comparisons of acoustic predictions based on existing Arctic models with predictions based on in situ data collected by Seaglider vehicles in the summer of 2017 show differences in the strength, depth, and number of ducts, highlighting the importance of in situ data. These differences have a significant effect on the later, more intense portion of the acoustic time front referred to as reverse geometric dispersion, where lower-order modes arrive prior to the final cutoff.

Towards real-time under-ice acoustic navigation at mesoscale ranges

Webster, S.E., L.E. Freitag, C.M. Lee, and J.I. Gobat, "Towards real-time under-ice acoustic navigation at mesoscale ranges," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 26-30 May, Seattle, WA, 537-544, doi:10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139231 (IEEE, 2015).

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26 May 2015

This paper describes an acoustic navigation system that provides mesoscale coverage (hundreds of kilometers) under the ice and presents results from the first multi-month deployment in the Arctic. The hardware consists of ice-tethered acoustic navigation beacons transmitting at 900 Hz that broadcast their latitude and longitude plus several bytes of optional control data. The real-time under-ice navigation algorithm, based on a Kalman filter, uses time-of-flight measurements from these sources to simultaneously estimate vehicle position and depth-averaged local currents. The algorithm described herein was implemented on Seagliders, a type of autonomous underwater glider (AUG), but the underlying theory is applicable to other autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). As part of an extensive field campaign from March to September 2014, eleven acoustic sources and four Seagliders were deployed to monitor the seasonal melt of the marginal ice zone (MIZ) in the Beaufort and northern Chukchi Seas. Beacon-to-beacon performance was excellent due to a sound duct at 100 m depth where the transmitters were positioned; the travel-time error at 200 km has a standard deviation of 40 m when sound-speed is known, and ranges in excess of 400 km were obtained. Results with the Seagliders, which were not regularly within the duct, showed reliable acoustic ranges up to 100 km and more sparse but repeatable range measurements to over 400 km. Navigation results are reported for the real-time algorithm run in post-processing mode, using data from a 295-hour segment with significant time spent under ice.

More Publications

Acoustics Air-Sea Interaction & Remote Sensing Center for Environmental & Information Systems Center for Industrial & Medical Ultrasound Electronic & Photonic Systems Ocean Engineering Ocean Physics Polar Science Center
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