Shortly after the tragic sinking of the R.M.S. TITANIC, with a loss of over 1500 lives, the nations using the transatlantic shipping lanes joined together at the Safety of Life At Sea conference to form the International Ice Patrol. The United States Government agreed to manage the service, and in 1914 assigned this task to the Revenue Cutter Service, the predecessor of the United States Coast Guard. Since that time, Ice Patrol has searched the North Atlantic for icebergs, first with ships and now aircraft, and warned mariners of the iceberg danger area. Ice Patrol also receives iceberg reports from ships and other sources.
A good knowledge of the ocean circulation in the vicinity of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland is critical to the success of Ice Patrol's efforts to predict the movement of icebergs after they have been located. The icebergs move southward in the cold waters of the Labrador Current, which brings many icebergs through Flemish Pass and down the eastern edge of the Grand Banks, an area known as "iceberg alley." Ice Patrol monitors the Labrador Current using satellite-tracked drifting buoys. The drifters are launched from Ice Patrol's reconnaissance aircraft and are tracked using the Argos system. At its Operations Center in Groton, Connecticut, Ice Patrol enters ocean current data from the buoy tracks and wind data provided by the United States Navy into an iceberg drift model to predict the movement of the icebergs. Data on ocean waves and sea surface temperature are used to estimate the deterioration of all the icebergs being tracked. The drifting buoys contribute to this effort as well, because each buoy is fitted with a temperature sensor.