Severe environments instrumentation in the 1990's-a decade of change

The decade of the 1990's has been a decade of change for the Severe Environments Technical Committee. The Severe Environments Instrumentation Committee evolved from the Arctic Instrumentation Technical Committee, which originally focused on instrumentation and data recording in polar regions, particularly Arctic acoustics. The committee has change names twice since 1990 as the field of interest continues to expand. With the name change to Polar Instrumentation Technical Committee, the field of interest was expanded from Arctic instrumentation to include instrumentation and polar oceanography in both the Arctic and Antarctic. A change to Severe Environments Instrumentation reflected an even broader area of interest, including polar regions, deep ocean, near shore surf zones, and areas of high waves or high winds. Since 1990, twenty-eight papers have been published in OCEANS conference proceedings related to polar or other severe environments. These papers covered topics such as autonomous data collection systems for use in polar regions, instrumentation and measurements for polar oceanography and high latitude physics, and buoy design in extreme wave environments. This paper reviews the development of the Severe Environments Technical committee and related papers presented at OCEANS conferences from 1990 to the present.