The Greenland Ice Sheet gains mass in the winter through snowfall and loses mass in the summer through surface melting and icebergs calving off the edge of the ice sheet. If summer melt and calving outweigh snowfall within a year, the Greenland Ice Sheet loses mass to the ocean and contributes to sea level rise. This is what has happened …
Dangerous Storms
Tasiilaq, Greenland, Friday, Feb. 6, 1970. 6 p.m. Dead silence falls over Tasiilaq. Daylight is long gone in this village on the southeast coast of Greenland, leaving the afternoon pitch black. A fresh layer of snow from the morning covers the ground, reflecting the darkness around it. The vacuum of space is clear and stars glint behind snow-covered mountains. But …
Greenland PIES
Throwing moorings into the ocean and expecting to get them back comes with risk. And if you’re the worrying type, strapping expensive equipment to a massive anchor and dropping it over the side of a vessel might not be for you. You’ll have months of stress as you anxiously sit at your desk analyzing some other data sets, wondering: Are …
Warming waters in a frozen ocean
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/117763717" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="300" iframe="true" /] The Arctic is the realm of ice. A frozen world of tall snowcapped coastal peaks. Of polar bears and seals. Of explorers trekking ever onwards towards the pole. But there's another Arctic that is not immediately visible, hidden below the surface of the ocean. And down in the deep there is water …
Iceberg Hazards
By Rebecca Jackson The fatal blow was definitely not the first hit. Icebergs plowed over Mooring SF1, again and again, for thirteen months. Every few weeks, SF1’s underwater apparatus of scientific instruments was pushed towards the sea floor by a passing iceberg. Usually, these chunks of ice – sometimes as tall as a skyscraper and wide as seven city blocks …