Melt lakes on Greenland's ice sheet. Photo: Ed Stockard (http://www.flickr.com/photos/coastaleddy/)

Click this link to watch a short movie.

This movie, produced by the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory, consists of stills and video collected during 2009 and 2010. Meltwater is the theme. The vocal is a Shaman Inuit Chant.

Greenland experienced a record amount of melting in 2010.

New records were set during the year for surface melting, runoff of water, the number of days when bare ice was exposed due to melting snow, and the decrease in the total mass of Greenland’s ice sheets, according to a paper published recently in Environment Research Letters.

NOAA is also out with its annual Arctic report card for 2010, which among other things summarizes what was observed in Greenland this past year:

Greenland climate in 2010 is marked by record-setting high air temperatures, ice loss by melting, and marine-terminating glacier area loss. Summer seasonal average (June-August) air temperatures around Greenland were 0.6 to 2.4°C above the 1971-2000 baseline and were highest in the west. A combination of a warm and dry 2009-2010 winter and the very warm summer resulted in the highest melt rate since at least 1958 and an area and duration of ice sheet melting that was above any previous year on record since at least 1978. The largest recorded glacier area loss observed in Greenland occurred this summer at Petermann Glacier, where 290 km2 of ice broke away. The rate of area loss in marine-terminating glaciers this year (419 km2) was 3.4 times that of the previous 8 years, when regular observations are available. There is now clear evidence that the ice area loss rate of the past decade (averaging 120 km2/year) is greater than loss rates pre-2000.

Comments (0) Jan 30 2011

PolarTREC teacher Jim Pottinger does the hokey-pokey at Summit Station. All photos: Jim Pottinger

“Sleeping in a tent in the Arctic was a new experience for me. Temperatures dipped below 0°F and the winds were consistently blowing against the tent.”– Jim Pottinger, 2010 PolarTREC teacher

Jim Pottinger enjoys cold weather, so living at Summit Station’s Tent City on the Greenland ice cap for a week was fine by him. Camping atop 3200 meters of ice was one of several new experiences for the Pennsylvania native who travelled to Greenland last summer as part of the PolarTREC Program. Pottinger’s team, which is led by PI Konrad Steffen (CIRES), travelled to Summit to maintain instrumentation for the NSF-funded BSRN – Compatible Irradiance Measurements and the Stable Boundary Layer

At Summit Station, Pottinger worked with Karl Schroff and Hansjoerg Frei (from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and Nikko Bayou (UC Boulder).

After a long day of shoveling snow Nikko Bayou reaches the APTU at last.

Their first task was to locate and retrieve an Automated Temperature Profiling Unit (APTU), which started its mission recording high altitude weather data in 2007.

“After a four-mile bone-chilling [snowmobile] ride, we arrived at the site. It was a beautiful location in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet. The sky was blue, the terrain was white and there was nothing as far as the eye could see,” Pottinger wrote in his August 14 journal.

They located the unit by GPS. Only two feet of the ten-foot tall APTU tripod was sticking up out of the snow. It took six hours and digging down about twenty feet before they freed the tripod and data logger using snowmobiles and ropes.

Elevating the Automatic Weather Station - turns out it looks tougher than it is.

The team’s next task was to elevate Summit’s AWS, one of eighteen such stations in Greenland. First, the scientists attached cable extensions to accommodate the station’s new height. Next, they erected a tripod over the station, attached a rope to the top of the AWS, and lifted the station ten feet while inserting an extension tube to the base. Once the station was secure, they removed the tripod and later verified data transmission. The entire data transmission process only took one hour!

Next, they dug a 140-centimeter deep snow pit next to the AWS. Pottinger recorded the pit’s snow structure, making notes of density, snow crystal shape and size, layer thickness and volume  every ten centimeters. These measurements will help ground-truth the AWS and ensure that sensors were working properly over the two previous years.

Pottinger becomes an old hand at snow pit measurements.

Pottinger also assisted in elevating and calibrating BSRN instrumentation and learned about ongoing NOAA weather experiments.

Pottinger’s visit coincided with Summit’s transition between seasonal crews. This meant a busy couple of days while winter preparations were made. Following a great end of season dinner, Pottinger spent his last night in the Big House and flew out with a jubilant summer crew the next morning.

Summer crew kicks back at the end of the season party at Lake Fergueson.

Pottinger, who has a background in geology, coordinates the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He acts as an academic advisor, making sure students are on an academic path consistent with their post-secondary goals, and as a science teacher, giving periodic guest lectures in science classes.

Pottinger hopes to return to Greenland’s Swiss Camp next May with Steffen. He will again be involved in systems maintenance and hopes to learn more about how the collected data is being used in various science projects. In the meantime, he’s keeping busy sharing his experience with students, teachers and community. Pottinger hopes he can begin to correct some of the misconceptions people have about climate change, the Arctic, and the people who live there.—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Jan 20 2011

Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its 2010 Arctic Report Card, which reported that so far this year Greenland has experienced record-setting high air temperatures, ice loss, and marine-terminating glacier area loss. Summer seasonal average (June-August) air temperatures around Greenland were 0.6 to 2.4°C above the 1971-2000 baseline, and temperatures were highest in the western part of the country.

The hot summer followed a warm and dry winter, resulting in the highest melt rate since at least 1958. The area and duration of ice sheet melting was higher than any previous year on record since at least 1978.

Scientists observed large glacier area loss, particularly at the Petermann Glacier, where 290 km² of ice broke away. The rate of area loss in marine-terminating glaciers this year (419 km²) was 3.4 times that of the previous 8 years, when regular observations are available. There is now clear evidence that the ice area loss rate of the past decade (averaging 120 km²/year) is greater than loss rates pre-2000.

CH2M HILL Polar Services supports much of the science and research that contributed to the Arctic Report Card.  —Rachel Walker

Comments (0) Oct 25 2010

From hat tricks to the Helheim glacier—a young David Holland spent much of his childhood on ice before studying the matter full time. Photo: Denise Holland

Addicted to Ice

Growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, meant David Holland was well acquainted with ice in nearly every form from a young age. Years later, as a mathematics professor at New York University (NYU) and director of the university’s Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science he’s still surrounded by ice.

Now, his days are spent traveling the world studying ice-ocean interactions and developing computer models that explain how the world’s ice and oceans may fare in a changing climate.

“In the late 1990s, it was noticed that glaciers change a lot faster than people thought—they were much more dynamic. My background is in ocean science, so I was curious about this speed up and the ocean’s contributions,” Holland said. “So I became interested in studying and modeling this. I guess you can say I’m addicted to ice in a lot of ways,” he laughed.

Studying Ice Around The World

David Holland’s love of studying and modeling ice has taken him from the top of the planet to the bottom, and lots of places in between. Here he is all smiles in Antarctica. Photo: Denise Holland

Holland’s fascination with ice has led to some interesting jobs throughout his career and has taken him on adventures spanning the globe.

While still in Newfoundland, he worked as a research engineer to determine ways to move icebergs in order to prevent collisions with ships.

“This technology really never panned out. In Newfoundland and Labrador and Greenland there are icebergs all over the place. We tried to blow them up, cut them in half and melt them, and what not. Really large icebergs are a challenge to move and really the easiest thing is to just get out of their way,” Holland explained.

South Of The Equator

After leaving Canada, Holland headed 10,000 miles south to Australia for a postdoctorate fellowship at the Australia Bureau of Meteorology. While there he worked on coupled modeling—pairing global ocean models with atmospheric models. It was an exciting time because he worked with a group of modelers who had just started to include sea ice in global climate models.

“As we were doing that in the 1990s, nobody had the vaguest thought sea ice in the Arctic would change the way it has today. We now know in the summer sea ice reaches half the extent it used to. That was something no one even remotely believed in the 1990s. Today those models still work pretty well, but they aren’t good enough to project the kind of sea ice behavior we’re actually observing,” he said.

Launching Career

After finishing his postdoctoral work in Australia and the United Kingdom, Holland was a research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. In 1998, he joined NYU as a professor where he lectures, develops computer models and plans research missions. His most recent mission supports an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded project in Greenland.

Field Work in Greenland

David Holland (far right), Denise Holland, and graduate student Carl Gladish pose at the calving front of the Helheim glacier during this summer’s field effort in the fjords of Greenland. Photo: Denise Holland

This July and August Holland was busy studying ocean and ice sheet interactions at the Ilulissat and Helheim glaciers in the fjords of Greenland. The work is part of a five-year (2009-2013) effort to improve the understanding of how warm, deep ocean waters are influencing ice sheet retreat.

Holland and a team of graduate students recorded meteorological observations and collected water temperature, salinity, oxygen, suspended sediment and current measurements using CTDs.

In sea-ice-covered areas, the team used a helicopter to first break up the sea ice before lowering an expendable CTD (XCTD) into the water column. An XCTD is an expendable probe that can be dropped from moving ships or aircraft. Data from the probe are transmitted by wire. For areas with less sea ice, the samples were collected by ship using a traditional CTD lowered off the side of the ship by winch.

Help From The Locals

This bearded seal may not realize it, but it’s playing a critical role in helping scientists study ice-ocean interactions. This summer, David Holland and colleagues attached CTDs with transmitters to the backs of two seals in Greenland. The CTDs will collect data as the animals swim through the water. The devices will fall off after 12 months when the seals molt. Photo: Aqqalu Rosing-Asvid

Holland also looked to the local population of seals to help collect water column data in the fjords. He attached small CTDs with telephone transmitters on the backs of two seals. “I have two seals swimming around now and they email me every four or five hours with profile temperatures and salinity. Then I can look at a map and see where they are,” he said.

The CTDs will stay on for roughly 12 months and will fall off when the seals molt in the spring. Holland points out that every effort was made to meet animal welfare guidelines and ensure that no harm comes to the animals as a result of the CTD attachment.

Water column data collected by both humans and seals alike will be combined with the meteorological observations and used to develop a coupled ocean-ice sheet model. Ultimately, the data and the resulting model will help researchers quantify how the water from the melting ice sheet may change global sea level in the future.

Climate and Future Modeling

In the future, Holland plans to tackle a very tricky climate-related question: which changes in climate are occurring naturally and which are influenced by human activities? He will collaborate with others to make long-term observations in both Greenland and Antarctica to try to answer these questions.

He also hopes to develop models that will give us a better idea of how sea level may change in the future. “It’s going to take a long time to get that sorted out correctly, if at all, but the climate model may tell us about future sea level changes due to glaciers,” Holland said.

A Family Affair

Month-long trips in remote areas like Greenland require a tremendous amount of effort and teamwork. Data collection success is dependent on detailed planning done months in advance. And Holland’s wife Denise is always more than happy to lend a helping hand by taking on much of the logistics planning and coordination.

Denise is also an artist currently studying at NYU. She often joins him in the field to document the trips through photos and videos. “The trips take about a month or so and it’s nice to have family around to help,” Holland said.

Holland’s graduate students also play a critical role in the success of the missions. In addition to teaching two graduate-level courses, he always takes graduate students on missions to help with data collection and to gain valuable field research experience.

“It’s [field work] extremely valuable both to me and to them. The graduate students are very, very, capable, hard working and creative about coming up with solutions. It’s an all-around victory,” he said.

To learn more about David Holland and his ice-ocean interaction research, visit: http://efdl.cims.nyu.edu/ —Alicia Clarke

Comments (1) Oct 12 2010

The slip of water separating Greenland's northwestern coast from Canada's Ellesmere Island is called the Nares Strait. The giant iceberg that calved from Greenland's Petermann Glacier in August has broken in two and entered the strait. Map courtesy Arctic Portal (http://www.arcticportal.org/)

The enormous iceberg that calved off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier Aug. 4 has split in two during its trip through the Nares Strait. Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who has been tracking the berg via satellite images, told CNN that it broke after repeatedly running into a small rocky island called Joe Island west of Greenland. 

“The forces of the ocean currents and the winds wiggling it on and off the island were too much,” Muenchow said.

The larger piece is about 152 square kilometers (59 square miles) or roughly 2.5 times the size of Manhattan. The smaller piece is about 84 kilometers (32 square miles). Muenchow and colleagues looked at historical records dating back to 1876 and determined that the original berg was the biggest to have calved off Petermann in that time.

Image courtesy Andreas Muenchow, University of Delaware

The iceberg entered the Nares Strait, which runs between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, at the beginning of the month. A European Space Agency satellite captured its progress and the agency created this animation of the berg’s travels:

Petermann Glacier iceberg progress toward Nares Strait

Meanwhile, Ohio State University Professor Jason Box has been thwarted in his attempts to reach the glacier to retrieve data from instruments he left last year at the site of the break. These include two time-lapse cameras that should have recorded the calving event.

He raced off last month to Greenland with colleagues in hopes of reaching the glacier and equipment. But the group was unable to arrange for a safe helicopter flight to the remote location and Box has returned home.

“Needless to say, it was difficult to turn south without the data,” he wrote Monday on his blog.  He’s hoping that a flight can be arranged for one of his colleagues before mid-October when daylight becomes too scarce for such a long trip. If that proves impossible, they’ll plan on a trip in March, he said.

­­– Emily Stone

Comments (0) Sep 14 2010