Photos: Arctic Domain Awareness Flight

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Climatologist Ignatius Rigor from the University of Washington looks through the back of the Arctic Domain Awareness flight he’s about to board at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Kodiak on Tuesday, July 14, 2015.

KODIAK -- It's about 5:45 a.m. on a dewy Tuesday morning, and an enthusiastic climatologist is preparing to board a U.S. Coast Guard flight over Arctic sea ice.

Ignatius Rigor checks a giant buoy, which looks like a bright red and yellow toy, in the expansive aircraft warehouse. Rigor is here from Seattle to ensure his special meteorological tool is dropped into the sea with immaculate precision. It has to fall between cracks in the ice at a location about 130 miles northwest of Deadhorse.

As the thawing Arctic Ocean opens to vessel traffic and economic activity, the Coast Guard is being tasked with shouldering more responsibility for overseeing the U.S. portion of it. To boost Coast Guard presence in the region, the Alaska district has been conducting annual Arctic Shield campaigns. The periodic "Arctic Domain Awareness" flights, conducted between spring melt and fall freeze-up, are supposed to accomplish what their name implies: boost understanding of the far-north region where the Coast Guard has new responsibilities.

To help with these deployments and to help train train its crew, the Coast Guard makes a practice of bringing scientists aboard its Arctic Domain Awareness flight -- especially the University of Washington team, which has been accompanying the Coast Guard for years.

Read more: On a mission in the Arctic skies, scientific research combines with Coast Guard training