Why the spring peak in Greenland field activities?

Field activities in Greenland are often confined to spring and summer. In autumn and winter, low temperatures, snowfall, the lack of sunlight, and more frequent storms do not provide optimal working conditions. Besides, the most interesting processes to study primarily occur in the warm season, such as the melting of the glaciers and ice sheet.

There are two distinct peaks in Greenland field activities. The first is in spring, for those people who need to get out there when things are still frozen, but when daylight and weather conditions are workable. The second peak is in mid-to-late summer, when weather conditions are best, melting is strongest, and the ice sheet margin and tundra is snow-free and more accessible. In between there is a potentially less pleasant period with often soggy conditions, and billions of mosquitoes. With the summer peak getting underway, let’s see what the spring rush is all about.

Installing instruments before the warm season

A good reason to get over to Greenland in spring is when you want your instruments in place to monitor what’s happening during the “warm” season, when plants grow, animals reproduce, and glaciers melt. Or, in the case of the University of Fribourg, when meltwater is generated at the top of the snowpack on the ice sheet. The Swiss scientists have now returned several times to the same sites in the lower accumulation area. They study how much meltwater gets refrozen in the cold snow underneath the surface, how much runs off into the ocean, and how this will change in time. Greenland Guidance provided weather forecasts for them to optimize their activities and prepare camp for storms, if needed. This spring their field team had two weeks on ice with surprisingly good weather conditions.

The University of Liverpool placing a weather station next to a fast-moving glacier (photo: James Lea).

Another team out there this spring was the University of Liverpool, who where installing GG-built instruments at a fast-flowing glacier in southwest Greenland. They are investigating a glacier that has retreated a lot in the past few years. When such a glacier experiences melt, an already complex system becomes even more complicated, for instance because of large pulses of meltwater originating from ice-dammed lakes along the sides. Or from rain events. With their instruments up and running in mid-May, they timed it well.

In May and June, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) visited GC-Net weather stations high on the ice sheet. This is part of their annual maintenance efforts that take place in spring to make sure all systems are up and running during summer. We were invited along to help out. Each station takes several hours to service, but the more people can help, the faster the Twin Otter airplane can return to town. The machine experienced engine trouble, but luckily this happened at the airport before departure, and not on or over the ice sheet.

Preparing for takeoff to do maintenance at GEUS GC-Net sites (photo: Ken Mankoff).

Snow conditions

A second reason for the GC-Net maintenance to take place when it is a bit colder has to do with snow conditions. The scientists need to dig deep snow pits to asses the mass of the snow that fell since the last site visit, and this is done best before seasonal melting happens.

For others a cold snow layer means increased safety. Ski traversers crossing the ice sheet have to pass crevasse fields, and this is done much more safely if there is a solid snow bridge on top, deposited during winter. When snow gets wet because of melting, such bridges get weaker, and falling through them into a deep crevasse becomes a serious threat. That’s why the wind-powered kite-ski traverse team led by Bernice Notenboom did their expedition before the melt season, in May. They traveled an astonishing distance of nearly 2000 km from ice sheet base Dye-2 to the northwestern town of Qaanaaq. During their expedition they were confronted with several storms that we warned them about via satellite transmission.

The Winds of Change kite-ski camp

Preparations for summer

Often spring activities are mere preparations for summer expeditions. Take for instance the greenhouse in Narsaq in south Greenland. In order for charitable organization Greenland Trees to be able to plant trees along south Greenland fjords at the end of summer, their new greenhouse had to be prepared for growing seeds and cuttings in April and May. It took a lot of effort, but is was truly nice to notice how happy locals are with the project, and how eager they are to collaborate – including schools.

The Greenland Trees greenhouse in Narsaq.

In terms of volume, most of our clients and collaborators are scientists or camera crews, asking where to rent a boat, how to get permits, which locals to interview, and how to get to a remote site. But we also provided support to Swedish company SKB, who have been running and funding science projects in the Kangerlussuaq region over the past 15 years. In preparation of a groundwater sampling campaign to occur at their unique bedrock borehole in late summer, we went ahead and inspected the state of their equipment, inventoried their storage, and downloaded data collected by sensors deep underground.

The SKB bedrock borehole at the ice sheet margin.

With SKB discontinuing their Greenland science projects as of 2022, Greenland Guidance was selected to take over their surface hydrology project situated in the Two Boat Lake catchment. This is an exciting opportunity, and we welcome suggestions for scientific collaboration by anyone who reads this. More about the TBL project in an upcoming blog post!

Two Boat Lake with the ice sheet in the background.

Busy times

For Greenland Guidance, spring is the busiest time of year. This is when we support field parties remotely, take part in fieldwork ourselves, prepare for fieldwork in summer, and custom-build instruments for summer deployment. Nowadays we are also building and refurbishing instruments for use in the Himalayas for Utrecht University and the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. And we’ve expanded our area of expertise by now also focussing on ocean sciences through collaboration with MetOcean in Canada, and our new instrument platform Polar Monitoring.

Climate science enabled by Forloh

The glaciers in south Greenland are the canaries in the coal mine. They are located in the warmest part of Greenland. As the climate warms, glaciers further north will experience similar conditions in the future. So to learn about the future fate of the Greenland ice sheet, we must study how south Greenland glaciers fare in present-day climate conditions. For this reason we installed 3 draw wire ablation trackers (DWIATs) in south Greenland, and more instruments will follow. An important difference with most other science projects is that this project got funded by a pioneering, US-based company named Forloh.

Forloh site 1 as seen from above. The DWIAT instrument is located between helicopter and moulin (meltwater drainage hole).

For Greenland Guidance it all started when we were approached by Greenland logistics guru Kathy Young who was in touch with a company eager to contribute to climate science. A company appropriately selling warm outdoor clothing. Forloh was seeking to sponsor climate science in a cost-effective manner. With Greenland Guidance’s non-profit approach to science, a match was soon in the making.

Our missions with the instruments in south Greenland is not only that the observational data are shared freely with researchers across the globe, but also that the measurement locations are optimal for scientists. For this reason we asked the research community where they could see most value in having DWIATs monitor ice melt and motion. After this we decided on 3 sites requiring only short helicopter flights in south Greenland.

Winter temperatures – an example of Forloh scientific data displayed in the GG data portal. DWIATs also measure surface melt, latitude, longitude, altitude along with several system-diagnostics parameters. Note how DWIAT 1 got covered by winter snow accumulation judging from a reduced temperature variability on the right-hand side of the graph. But satellite transmissions keep coming in.

One monitoring site is right next to a moulin (meltwater drainage hole) on the main ice sheet. The second instrument is on the large, fast-flowing glacier named Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat (often called Qajuuttap Sermia) which is receiving increasing amounts of scientific attention these days. The third is on Nordbo glacier (Nordbogletsjer), a historic site where ice melt was also measured over 4 decades ago, providing an excellent opportunity to study the impacts of climate change since then.

Kathy Young and Steve Munsell, GG support crew along with Armin Dachauer, on Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat (also called Qajuuttap glacier) after installing a DWIAT.

Our helicopter charter took place on a Thursday in August. We were spared any weather delays, which are not uncommon when flying in Greenland. Our first site took some scouting as we had about 20 moulin candidate sites selected from satellite imagery. The second and third site were know before arrival, chosen to avoid crevasses and to match the historic measurement location, respectively. Instrument assembly/testing and drilling the draw wire into the glacier took 30-45 minutes per site. Even though the drilling at these wet sites proved difficult, we managed to stay on schedule, leaving some time for collecting footage at the spectacular moulin site.

We very much invite other scientists to collaborate scientifically or logistically in this project. Please do get in touch if you’re active in the region and have specific data needs.

The Forloh study area in south Greenland in red. The blue area contains GEUS PROMICE instrumentation. The red area is where Greenland Trees is active. Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat is the large glacier in the middle.

Sky Detectives – a BEA documentary featuring Greenland Guidance

Recently the "Sky Detectives" documentary aired on French television showcasing the high level of expertise by the French bureau for investigating civil aviation safety, the BEA. Central to the storyline is a project the BEA coordinated in Greenland, in which Greenland Guidance played its part.

On 30 September 2017 a large Airbus A380 airplane lost parts of its number 4 engine, which were scattered over the Greenland ice sheet. Luckily nobody got hurt. An investigation into the cause of the accident was started immediately, but the critical engine piece needed for the investigation, the fan hub, was nowhere to be found in the area searched by helicopters. A new expedition could not be launched until the next spring due to the onset of cold and dark Greenland winter. So in spring 2018 an airborne radar team and a ground radar team combed the 15 km2 search area to find … nothing.

Director Louis-Pascal Couvelaire interviewing GEUS researcher Liam Colgan for “Sky Detectives”.

The search for the (now two-part) fan hub proved extremely difficult because the heavy titanium had impacted into the snow surface. It got covered by increasing amounts of winter snow as time progressed, rendering visual detection impossible. Also the radar systems initially proved impractical as subsurface ice layers, of which there are many in this part of Greenland, could be mistaken for engine pieces.

Having improved their processing techniques of the airborne radar data, by 2019 Onera, the French aerospace lab, had identified a few potential targets for the ground team to inspect. And shortly after, on the last day of an expedition suffering from several storm delays, a team led by researcher Ken Mankoff of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) detected a metal object at 3-4 meters below the surface. Right between two large, potentially dangerous, snow-covered crevasses.

Dirk van As on behalf of Greenland Guidance and GEUS in “Sky Detectives”.

The final expedition to the ice sheet took place in June 2019. A team of 5 including 3 Greenland Guidance mountaineers flew to the dig site armed with shovels and lots of safety equipment. The much desired fan hub fragment was extracted on 30 June.

Central to the investigation was the BEA, the French bureau for investigating civil aviation safety. They got all partners together and working towards retrieving the missing fan hub pieces. Recently, Elephant Productions finished a documentary on the BEA in which the Greenland project gets ample attention. The documentary was made for TV channel France 5, and its French title is Les détectives du ciel. It’s a 87 minute documentary that features Greenland Guidance quite prominently!

A shorter, English version called “Sky Detectives” will be broadcasted internationally. Keep an eye on our @GreenlandGdnc Twitter feed to find out where you can see it.

“Under Ice”, a documentary focussing on the final fan hub recovery expedition, by Arnar Ingi Gunnarsson / Gale Force North.

Revisiting ice monitoring equipment along the K-transect

Last summer, Greenland Guidance was again invited to assist with instrument maintenance on the western slope of the Greenland ice sheet. Here, along the iconic K-transect, Danish and Dutch scientist have been using automated measurement systems to monitor climate variables and surface ice melt for decades. As these weather stations, ice ablation trackers and other scientific measurement systems are exposed to harsh weather such as low temperatures, high wind speeds and countless thaw/freeze cycles, they need to be looked after once a year.

The PROMICE weather station at GEUS monitoring site KAN_L.

As in previous years, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU) and Greenland Guidance joined forces to visit all 10 measurement sites. Unlike the year before, the weather was reasonably well behaved; clouds and winds did not interfere too much with helicopter operations. In the higher ranges of our work area though we encountered a thick layer of saturated snow. Uncommonly warm air masses were over the ice sheet causing a serious melt event, severely complicating moving about in the soft, wet snow.

A draw wire ice ablation tracker one year after deployment.

Most equipment was found in good working order, requiring between 15 minutes and 3 hours of ground time per measurement site. The good news for Greenland Guidance was that all 4 custom-built draw wire ice ablation trackers (DWIATs) were fully functional and transmitting ice melt and motion data home.

A moulin fountain, spraying ice sheet meltwater 10 m up into the air.

One of the highlights of the 5-day fieldwork campaign was the sighting of what is best described as a “moulin fountain”. This rarely seen phenomenon occurs when overpressure from a large moulin (meltwater drainage hole in ice) is released via a crack in the ice to a smaller, neighbouring moulin.

Weather forecasts for Swiss scientists on the Greenland ice sheet

Greenland Guidance provided detailed weather forecasting for a Swiss science expedition on the Greenland ice sheet in spring this year. The expedition by the University of Fribourg took three weeks during which they camped in tents at 1700 m above sea level.

Weather is the largest safety hazard to expeditions at the camp’s position in southwest Greenland. Even in spring, temperatures can be dangerously low at -35 C, storms can damage tents, and whiteout conditions can make people lose camp even at 10 m distance. Also other dangers exist, yet it is unlikely to encounter dangerous crevasses or wildlife in this region; crevasses usually form where ice is thinner, closer to the ice sheet margin, whereas polar bears are spotted more frequently where their food sources live – on sea ice and at the coast.

Luckily the Swiss expedition did not encounter overly hazardous weather conditions on this occasion. Our weather forecasts helped them plan their days away from the safety of camp. Each morning at breakfast time they received an Iridium satellite text message containing up to 160 characters worth of weather information for their location and finetuned to their activities. Upon request, or if the situation required it, more weather messages would follow.

Later in the year, during an exceptional heat wave in summer, we passed over the region where the Swiss had camped. The surface of the area had turned into slush (snow saturated with meltwater), with a multitude streams where usually only snow can be seen. Good news for Swiss research on meltwater in snow. Less good news for those having to recover equipment temporarily stored on the ice sheet, now possibly stuck in refrozen meltwater…

Helicopter view of extreme melting at 1750 m elevation on the Greenland ice sheet 19 August 2021

High-elevation weather station maintenance on the Greenland ice sheet

This June, Greenland Guidance joined the annual maintenance of weather stations high up on the Greenland ice sheet. One major difference with instrument maintenance closer to the ice sheet margin is that equipment in the interior of the ice sheet gradually gets buried by snow. In the higher parts melt is rare, and more snow accumulates in a year than that it melts. At low elevations summer melting is abundant, ablating winter snow and several meters of the underlying ice. Ice dynamics take care of the ice mass transfer from high to low elevations – otherwise the ice sheet would get taller and steeper each year.

A downside to working in the accumulation area is that one needs to shovel snow pits of 3 m deep to retrieve buried equipment, which is particularly challenging given the thin air at 2-3 km above sea level. Also travel distances are larger between the science site and the airport where you start the day, meaning that there is a larger chance of running into adverse weather delaying the operation. On the other hand the work can be done by a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with skis, as opposed to the helicopters required to land in low-elevation, uneven, or even crevassed terrain. These airplanes don’t worry as much about weather conditions as helicopters do. And they can carry a lot of equipment.

GEUS GC-Net maintenance by Twin Otter

Not hampered by cloudy or windy conditions, we visited five measurement sites of the Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) by Kenn Borek Air Twin Otter in six days. This year is the first year that GC-Net maintenance is done by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The network recently changed hands. The GC-Net got established by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) in Boulder (US) in the 1990s and has since delivered large amounts of important climate data, contributing to many scientific studies and climate reports. Professor Konrad Steffen was a central person in all this, pushing the benefit of these measurements to climate science to great heights.

Ice sheet weather station maintenance along the iconic K-transect

This year we took part in a scientific expedition to the southwestern region of the Greenland ice sheet. Representing the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), and in collaboration with the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU), we serviced instruments and stakes placed at 10 different sites on the ice sheet. We accessed the remote sites, up to 140 km into the ice sheet, by Air Greenland helicopter.

GAP/PROMICE weather station KAN_U in 1 m of snow

The scientific instruments by GEUS and IMAU monitor the interaction between the atmosphere and the ice sheet. In other words, they determine how much ice melts, and what is causing the melt: which combination of warm weather, solar radiation, strong winds, etc. The GEUS instruments are part of the measurement networks of the Greenland Analogue Project (GAP) and the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE). We even installed 4 of our own draw-wire ice ablation trackers (DWIATs) – more about that in an upcoming news item.

The measurements are taken along the iconic K-transect, where ice sheet monitoring already began in 1990(!). The longer the times series, the more valuable it gets. Long climate records provide much needed context for measurements in individual years: if there is 5 m of ice melt – is it a lot (above average) or not?

Even though taking measurements over many years is crucial for climate science, it is not always an attractive option for funding agencies. So if you’d like to financially support the monitoring activities along the K-transect, it could make a large difference!

Sign up to become a 2021 Greenland Guidance field specialist

We are always on the lookout for people with specific skill sets that can help us during future field campaigns. Do you have field experience in Greenland or other remote regions? If you’d like to join us during the 2021 field season (NH spring/summer), then tell us you’re available here: https://greenlandguidance.com/about-us/join-us/. If you’re on the list, we’ll know how to find you.

The team recovering an Airbus A380 engine fan hub from crevassed terrain. Picture by Austin Lines (Polar Research Equipment).

University of Lausanne sediment coring in a Greenland fjord

This september, a team of scientists from the University of Lausanne set out to collect sediment cores from the bottom of the fjord into which the glacier named Eqip Sermia calves icebergs. They contacted Greenland Guidance to help them find a boat with a winch that could lift the sediment cores from the bottom of the 200-m deep fjord to the surface. Finding a boat was easy, but finding a winch that would get the job done was more of a challenge. Especially in times of COVID-19 with life in Greenland coming to a standstill. But we managed to track one down so that the expedition could take place.

The scientists reported that “The expedition went great! We collect 35 sediment cores and things went well with the boat. It was a ton of work and a bit icy on the water by the end. It really went as good as we could have expected.”

Scientist processing a sediment core just winched onto the deck

Weather forecasting for a Swiss science expedition

This summer Greenland Guidance initiated a new service: expedition weather forecasting. Especially important for expeditions taking place in remote regions where internet access is virtually impossible. Three scientists from the University of Fribourg camped on the ice sheet while investigating meltwater in snow. We sent them detailed weather forecasts that they received on their Iridium satellite phone each morning before breakfast. We included reports on longterm stability and/or storms approaching so they could plan their activities accordingly.

Swiss scientists moving camp (Picture: Horst Machguth)

The forecasts turned out particularly relevant when the team was trying to charter a helicopter for their departure, but cloud fields were causing frequent white-out conditions during which helicopters can’t fly. At an earlier date we warned them for heavy snowfall and strong winds for their location, which is extremely rare in July.

Heavy snow accumulation during the team’s expedition recorded by a nearby PROMICE weather station. 15 cm is a lot of snow for this location in summer!

Upon safe return, we received useful feedback from the field party, allowing us to finetune our Iridium messaging forecast service. The team was pleased with the accuracy of the forecasts and reported “they were very valuable and helpful!”