Summary
Over the past two decades drifting sea-ice buoys have been used by the Australian Government Antarctic Division [AGAD] to observe sea-ice drift and deformation. Initial deployments often used single buoys to resolve the large-scale characteristics of Antarctic sea-ice drift. In the 1990s GPS receivers have been used for improved horizontal position data. This allowed the deployment of arrays of buoys that not only measured the sea-ice drift but also the characteristic of the relative ice-velocity distribution within the buoy cluster. More recently auxiliary sensors have been integrated to provide additional information on the sea-ice characteristics. Here we present a summary of results from recent buoy deployments, which formed part of: * ARISE 2003 (10 drifting GPS buoys off Wilkes Land in September/October 2003); * ISPOL 2004 (24 drifting GPS buoys in the Western Weddell Sea in December 2004); and * Lakris 2006 (1 drifting GPS buoy with stress gauge in the Lazarev Sea in July 2006); and provide an outlook of activities proposed for September/October 2007, which will constitute AGAD's sea-ice buoy activity during the 2007/08 IPY.