  The Earth's climate is rapidly changing and some of the most drastic changes
can be seen in the Arctic, where sea ice extent has diminished considerably in
recent years. As the Arctic climate continues to change, gathering in situ sea
ice measurements is increasingly important for understanding the complex
evolution of the Arctic ice pack. To date, observations of ice stresses in the
Arctic have been spatially and temporally sparse. We propose a measurement
framework that would instrument existing sea ice buoys with strain gauges. This
measurement framework uses a Bayesian inference approach to infer ice loads
acting on the buoy from a set of strain gauge measurements. To test our
framework, strain measurements were collected from an experiment where a buoy
was frozen into ice that was subsequently compressed to simulate convergent sea
ice conditions. A linear elastic finite element model was used to describe the
response of the deformable buoy to mechanical loading, allowing us to link the
observed strain on the buoy interior to the applied load on the buoy exterior.
  The approach presented in this paper presents an instrumentation framework
that could use existing buoy platforms as in situ sensors of internal stresses
in the ice pack.
