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In high-school, I learned in a textbook that glaciers are melting. My teacher said that what was written in that textbook was right, and that was it. There was no proof, no explanation, no scientist’s testimony. All of that, I discovered much later during my studies in the geosciences. Yet as the global temperatures keep rising, and our politicians apply rigorously the “keep calm and carry on” mod ...[Read More]
Hidden beneath the surface of ice sheets lies an intricate structure carrying a unique fingerprint of past ice flow and climate conditions. Disentangling the drivers of an ice sheet’s enigmatic stratigraphy could theoretically unravel the ice sheet’s past evolution and provide a much clearer picture of things to come in the future. One way to detect this mysterious stratigraphy is to use ice-penet ...[Read More]
Around the summer solstice of 2022, a small group of twenty young researchers met in Svalbard, a small island lost between Norway and the North Pole. The Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research wanted to bring us together around the theme of “The Global Arctic“. The scope of this summer school was to “produce a better understanding of the significance of the concept of Gl ...[Read More]
Soaking up the sun and recharging batteries on a peaceful and quiet summer day, or fighting to stay upright during extreme snow storms in the middle of winter, while continuously recording valuable air temperature, pressure, wind-speed and so much more – such is the life of an automatic weather station on the Greenland ice sheet. Even though they are so remote, sitting by themselves surround ...[Read More]
Drones are not only a cool toy to play with. They are also a useful instrument to monitor and study glaciers and ice caps. By taking thousands of images flying above the ice, we can make 3D models of ice masses at centimetre resolution. Using drones, we can now survey small to medium sized glaciers and ice caps in unprecedented detail. In recent years, we have conducted several surveys on glaciers ...[Read More]
We have waited eight years for it, and it is finally out: the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a.k.a. « IPCC AR6 »)! And it is more than 10,000 pages long across Working Groups! Fortunately, a synthesis report integrating the findings of all three working groups should be released in Autumn 2022. However, we, at the EGU Cryosphere Blog, thought it might be us ...[Read More]
A Cold War nuclear-powered military base inside the Greenland Ice Sheet sounds like science fiction, but the science that came out of this U.S. army installation was anything but fiction. In last week’s EGU CR blog post, Paul Bierman and Amanda Schmidt discussed the advances made by the U.S. military in operating across the Greenland Ice Sheet that culminated in the establishment of Camp Century i ...[Read More]
Greenland, cold as it is, was appropriately front and center in the Cold War. Strategically placed between Europe and North America, the United States sought to maintain and enhance its position on the island so that American missiles and bombers were in striking range of many Soviet targets. Soviet bombers and missiles coming toward North America would streak over Greenland making early warning c ...[Read More]
It is scary how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting and how much freshwater it is discharging to the coastal areas around Greenland. This freshening is having a serious impact to coastal marine primary production, which is the foundation of the Arctic marine food web. Now, because of increased melting and freshwater discharge, we need to understand how coastal ecosystems will react. How will A ...[Read More]
"For over two decades, the sea ice group at the University of Alaska has worked with the community of Utqiaġvik, establishing an integrated observing network. This network includes local observations, a coastal radar system to monitor ice conditions, an in-situ mass balance site monitoring environmental change such as ice growth and snow cover, and the mapping of community sea ice trails." In thi ...[Read More]
