CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Greenland

Image of the Week : SAFIRE team getting ready to drill in Greenland

October 2, 2015
Image of the Week : SAFIRE team getting ready to drill in Greenland
The SAFIRE team sets up the drilling device on the Store Glacier, Western Greenland. Credit : T.J. Young

How do you get a hot water drill onto an ice sheet? The Subglacial Access and Fast Ice Research Experiment (SAFIRE) uses a hot water drill to directly access and observe the physical and geothermal properties where the ice meets rock or sediment at the glacier-bed interface. Here, SAFIRE principal investigator Bryn Hubbard and post-doc Sam Doyle help fly in the drill spool at the start of the Summ ...[Read More]

Image of the Week: GISP II Borehole

September 11, 2015
Image of the Week: GISP II Borehole
The GISP II (Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two) borehole at Summit Station, Greenland. Credit: N. B. Karlsson

Climate records from ice cores have helped scientists understand the past changes in climate.The GISP II (Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two) ice core was more than 3km long and was drilled during a five year period in the 1990s. After the drilling ended the casing of the borehole was extended above the surface, so that the borehole can still be accessed for remeasurements of, for example, temperatur ...[Read More]

Image of the Week: Greenland Ice Streams

September 4, 2015
Image of the Week: Greenland Ice Streams
Credit: Copernicus data (2015)/ESA/Enveo

This image is from the west coast of Greenland and it shows several glaciers flowing towards the sea (upper part of the image), transporting ice into the ocean. The colours show the velocity of the ice. As the ice gets nearer to the coast it speeds up reaching speeds over 15m/day. The velocities were calculated using two Sentinel-1A radar scans from 3 and 15 January 2015. You can download a high r ...[Read More]

Science and Shovels: Traversing across the Greenland Ice Sheet.

July 13, 2015
Science and Shovels: Traversing across the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The Case tractor pulling the dome. Credit: N. B. Karlsson.

Moving 150 tonnes of equipment more than 450km across the Greenland Ice Sheet sounds like a crazy idea. In that context, moving a 14-metre high, dome-shaped, wooden structure seems like a minor point, but it really is not. I do not think I realised what an awesome and awe-inspiring project I was part of, until I was out there, in the middle of the blindingly white ice sheet, and I saw the enormous ...[Read More]

High-tech science, old-school ship – Anne-Katrine Faber and Malte Winther

March 17, 2015
High-tech science, old-school ship – Anne-Katrine Faber and Malte Winther

Last summer we got the chance to participate in an incredible Arctic expedition. The mission was clear and yet unclear at the same time: Bring your fanciest laser technology on a wooden schooner. Then cross the Atlantic and sail to the fjords of southern Green land and conduct science throughout the journey. During most of our expedition, our “scientific lab” contained icebergs, glaciers and beaut ...[Read More]

Do Beers Go Stale in the Arctic? – Jakob Sievers

March 13, 2015
Do Beers Go Stale in the Arctic? – Jakob Sievers
A curious polar bear investigates an instrument tower on sea-ice. Photo: Jakob Sievers.

A story about CO2 -fluxes between sea-ice and the atmosphere What’s it all about? Whenever I have had to describe my PhD research project to people outside of my research community, I have always found it useful to use an analogy most people are familiar with, namely beers. Now that I have the full attention of the entire class, allow me to explain. Say you were to find yourself at an outside café ...[Read More]

Only extremes – Babis Charalampidis

March 9, 2015
Only extremes – Babis Charalampidis
Last hundred meters until ZAC_S, the middle station on A. P. Olsen ice cap. (Credit: Daniel Binder)

– In fieldwork, you have no average. You just have extremes. When Daniel spoke his mind out loud we were facing a bright sunny day coming in from the opening of our tent. We were very glad to see that and ready to engage with our glaciological tasks. Our camp site was at the immediate fore field of the A. P. Olsen ice cap in Northeast Greenland. We had arrived there the previous evening and ...[Read More]

My drone summer – Johnny Ryan

December 9, 2014
My drone summer – Johnny Ryan
UAV on its way back from a mission with Store Glacier, West Greenland, in the background. Credit: Johnny Ryan

In the summer of 2014, our group at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge decided to pursue an ambitious but exciting field campaign in West Greenland. The aim was to survey Store Glacier once a day using a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (see photo above for a view from the UAV on its way back from a mission with Store Glacier, West Greenland in the background). The UAV ...[Read More]