Meltfactor.org

I am visiting Greenland’s geologic survey, Asiaq. Asiaq is the name for the goddess of weather and change. Asiaq is gathering important data for assessing Greenland’s climate.

Kobbefjord, near Nuuk, Greenland

Six of us meet early at Asiaq for a van to the harbor to a boat transport to Kobbefjord. By ski we made a 7 km round trip tour to service automated micro-climatological instrumentation.

One of two ‘twin’ climate stations in Kobbefjord. The redundant stations ensure data continuity and the possibility to assess uncertainty in point measurements. In the background are visible snow accumulation and surface radiation budget instrumentation.

Mark Andrew Pernosky gathers data from a climate station.

The Kobefjord installation is part of a long term ecological observations system that includes stream flow discharge, lake level, tundra fen methane capture (and other surface carbon budget sampling), snow cover automatic cameras, and more. The systems perspective is important in trans-disciplinary research.

I’m sitting in the busy Newark airport waiting for commercial air flight to Greenland via a 2 h layover in Copenhagen. I would have preferred a direct flight with the US Air National Guard 1 week ago, but had to postpone to wait at home instead of waiting in Greenland for delayed field operations to begin.

Goals for field work include maintaining meteorological and camera equipment beside key Greenland outlet glaciers.

With some luck, I will return with some very impressive images from the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) time lapse cameras. James Balog, spokesperson and what I say “executive futurist” for EIS has loaned my a very nice lens for my camera with which to hopefully bag some very nice aerial oblique images of major Greenland glaciers, hopefully under the near-dusk ‘magic hour’ light. The images are to be used in a book James is working on that features rarely seen Greenland glacier landscapes.

Flight is boarding. I gotta run.

Wish us luck! We need it!

The helicopter charter option to reach Petermann Glacier, the one we’ve been developing for weeks now, has dematerialized. As time is nearly out, before myself, Alun, and Richard need to return to our mid-latitude lives, we develop an alternative charter plan.  The charter flight would occur Thursday, 9 September. The aircraft would re-position from Thule AFB to Qaanaaq and head north to Petermann. Operable scenarios include: 1.) we use a volunteer in Qaanaaq to simply grab instruments or 2.) I get up to Qaanaaq on Wednesday 8 September. The main problem with 2.) is that the northbound flight is fully booked. I may proceed with the gamble that not all people show up for the flight and I can get on the flight and head north. Even if, the southbound flight on 15 September (flights are once per week) is also fully booked. So, we continue to consider options. Monday, I’ll speak with booking agents at Air Greenland. If I were to go north, my return home would be delayed a week.

I take advantage of the delay time here in Uummannaq to process a backlog of last year’s photos of Petermann Glacier that I shot during last year’s campaign. With a very nice camera/lens on loan from James Balog, I pressed the button to shoot more than 20,000 photos. I believe I have enough photos to publish a comprehensive illustrated assessment of this place…

July 2009. The endless summer days at 81 degrees north latitude produce substantial summer melting. While summer melting is not necessarily abnormal, melt intensity is expected to continue to increase as the global climate system responds to continued atmospheric loading of heat trapping gasses.

The Petermann Glacier medial river barely trickles out to sea. It’s not a stronger flow because it’s intercepted about 20 km upstream (in the distance) where the river pours into a breach in the surface called a moulin.

The shearing of the ice along the fjord walls occurs too quickly for the ice to deform. The shearing strength of the ice shelf is exceeded and rifts form as the ice tears apart. This is a normal process. The rifts are, of course, weak areas on the ice shelf. Petermann ice shelf has detached a large area along recently along one of these rifts. Melt water filling the rifts weakens the bonds, literally forcing apart the rift bottom.

…getting xcited…making progress on planning summer 2009 sailing voyage to Greenland plans. The boat (Gambo) will be making her way north from soon. The cruise from Motevideo, Uraguay to Maine will take roughly 70 days. I’m probably too busy to participate in that leg. I will instead continue pre-planning from here in the US.