Looking Back to Look Ahead

An Air Greenland helicopter arrives to return Jason Briner and his field crew to town after a month in the field studying the rocks and lakes around the Jakobshavn Isbrae. Photo: Jason Briner

As climate scientists attempt to forecast how increases in atmospheric temperatures expedite the melting of polar ice sheets, a team of paleoclimatologists is searching back in time for important clues on the effects of previous climate disruptions. Specifically, the team, led by Dr. Jason Briner (State University of New York, Buffalo), is studying Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae to understand how climate changes during the Little Ice Age and Holocene thermal maximum—a time span of roughly 10,000 to 100 years ago—impacted the glacier’s behavior. Given that the most comprehensive data on the glacier span only about two to three decades, reconstructing the Jakobshavn’s response to climate change over a period of thousands of years will yield insights into the relationship between warming temperatures and glacial trends, said Briner.

“The intent of paleoclimatology is to see what the earth systems are capable of doing in longer time periods and in different climate regimes,” said Briner. “By looking in the past, we have the ability to know what happened when it was 5 to 10 degrees colder or warmer. We are trying to make our research relevant in the context of modern climate changes so we might better understand what might happen in the future.”

Working on the Jakobshavn also provides a unique opportunity to do paleo work on an existing glacier, said Briner.

Jakobshavn Isbrae: The World’s Fastest Moving Glacier

Jakobshavn Isbrae is considered the world’s fastest moving glacier. According to a recent article in the Financial Times, the Jakobshavn Isbrae is perhaps the fastest moving glacier in the world. It drains roughly 6.5 percent of the Greenland ice sheet, and has been documented to be moving at 13 km per year and pouring about 40 km³ per year of ice into the fjord.

In the past two years, Briner and his team conducted a National Science Foundation-supported pilot study to demonstrate the utility of analyzing the glacier’s past. Concentrating on the Holocene period, which began about 12,000 years ago, when average temperatures were about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today, they attempted to identify more precise temperature ranges as well as to understand the glacier’s activity. They also collected information from the Little Ice Age, which followed the middle Holocene warm period and marked a cooling of the earth’s climate from about 600 to 100 years ago.

SUNY-Buffalo undergraduate student William Phlipps and graduate student Shanna Losee take core samples from a big pile of mud that formerly was a lake during the Little Ice Age. As the ice sheet advanced during the Little Ice Age, it blocked a river and created a lake. Once the lake was there, the river valley was buried by silty lake sediments. In the late 1980s, the lake drained out completely because the ice sheet (the lake's dam) retreated, and all the water spilled out. Photo: Jason Briner

Their data came from isotope analysis and radiocarbon dating of lake sediment, as well from three-dimensional maps created using historical photos and an assessment of the insect remains within their lake sediment samples. Although the team’s research focuses on the glacier itself, their detective work took place on the surrounding rocks and in the many lakes on the glacial moraine.

“We work where the ice was, not where it is,” said Briner. “Our geologic record comes from the landscape.”

Will Phlipps and Nicolas Young, PhD student, SUNY-Buffalo, hike along the crest of a moraine deposited during the Little Ice Age. In the distance is the iceberg-choked icefjord, which was occupied by the Jakobshavn ice stream during the Little Ice Age. The ice margin is now about 20 km away. Photo: Jason Briner

Lakes Rich With History

These lakes serve as conservatories of glacial debris, which drained into them when the Jakobshavn melted and retreated over time. Briner and his team study sediment cores from the lakes to date the contacts, which is how they confirmed the glacier advanced during the Little Ice Age.

“Until the Little Ice Age, the lakes had no glacial meltwater input,” said Briner. “The ice margin advanced during the Little Ice Age close to pre-existing lakes, but not over them.  In fact, it advanced just barely close enough that it spilled its melt water into the lake basin and ultimately the silt particles in the ice sheet melt water were deposited in the lake, which, prior to that, just had the organic sediments. When the glacier retreated, its margin receded back out of the lake’s drainage basin.”

Shanna Losee, Nicolas Young, and Will Phlipps on a coring platform on one of the lakes in the study area. Photo: Jason Briner

Putting the Puzzle Together

The team aims to reconstruct the climate and establish a more specific temperature record that spans the Holocene period. Currently scientists have a broad understanding of the average temperatures during the Holocene, but those temperatures varied significantly depending on altitude and location, said Briner.

“We are trying to get a record from our site and quantify the changes in ecology to get a local temperature record to see if it syncs with what the glacier was doing,” he said

The research at Jakobshavn is similar to research Briner and fellow scientists recently completed at the Sam Ford Fjord in Canada’s Baffin Island. Similar climate reconstruction efforts found that 9,500 years ago, the fjord’s kilometer-thick glacier melted in a “geologic instant” during a climate-warming period. Like the glacier in Sam Ford, Jakobshavn is sitting in a similarly deep fjord. Briner said the Baffin Island work revealed the significance of glaciers that lie in very deep water.

“When glaciers that calve retreat into deeper water, that promotes further retreat,” he said. “And that amplifies the retreat rate.”

The Jakobshavn is one of these glaciers; the calving front is in only 800 meters of water, but people who have done radar surveys discovered that most of Jakobshavn resides in a trough that is 1,400 meters below sea level. Once the Jakobshavn starts to retreat, it likely will continue retreating quickly, much like the glacier in Sam Ford did almost 10,000 years ago.

“With the Sam Ford, the glacier retreat was triggered by a warming climate,” said Briner. “This mechanism having to do with water depth was superimposed on the warming and made the response drastic. We reconstructed the relative instant disappearance of the glacier.”

That raises questions about the Jakobshavn. Specifically, when did it retreat in the past, what were the retreat rates, and were those associated with climate warming, said Briner. Preliminary conclusions are that the Jakobshavn Isbrae is tightly linked to climate change. The glacier’s fastest retreat rates occurred in the middle Holocene, at the height of the warmest temperatures. Then, when the Little Ice Age occurred, there was a rapid response and glacial growth—the glacier advanced about 35 kilometers—followed by significant retreat of 30 kilometers since the modern, 20th century warming began, said Briner.

“This tells us that when there is a climate perturbation, Jakobshavn has a really monstrous response,” he said.

Improving Climate Change Models

This information could help improve the accuracy of climate models. Currently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hampered by a lack of models that can accurately predict complex ice flow. By incorporating long-term, historic data and reconstructed climates, modelers will have a critical baseline by which to measure what the ice sheet did then and simulate potential actions it may take now, Briner said.

And though this specific research project on the Jakobshavn was only a two-year pilot study on the feasibility, Briner is confident much more research remains.

“Our initial project is limited in scope and we’ve had great success in doing what we said we were going to,” Briner said. “The possibilities for what’s next are big.”

In fact, one of Jason Briner’s next projects is huge: he leads the U Buffalo component of a 10-institute collaborative funded by NSF and led by Darrell Kaufman (U Northern Arizona). The investigators will collect lake sediments all over the Arctic for very detailed climate history information going back about 8000 years.  Read our recent conversation with Darrell Kaufman here.

Oktoberfest

 

At Summit they call it "Bradtoberfest." Brad Whelchel hones his Bavarian culinary skills for Oktoberfest at Summit.

A few weeks ago, the Summit weekly mentioned an Oktoberfest celebration with a tremendous Bavarian meal and polka music beamed over the Internet (which was somewhat less than tremendous, according to some). We wanted to know the back-story on the celebration, so we wrote to our colleagues.

Turns out that mechanic Brad Whelchel is the Oktoberfestmeister, but not because he considers himself Bavarian (some of his folks are Pennsylvania Deutsch). “I like to immerse myself in other cultures and festivities,” Brad explained.

“Two of my favorite holidays have to be Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day.  They are not the most traditional/religious of holidays, but they sure are fun!”, he wrote. Brad has celebrated the festival for years, often in Helen, Georgia (whose European settlers were Bavarian), near his home in Tennessee, so he knew a thing or two about Oktoberfest.

“My original plans were to tour Europe in the autumn, with the centerpiece of the trip being Oktoberfest in Munich.  But I got the call for the mechanic job in August, and took that instead,” Brad wrote.  “Around the middle of September I started thinking ‘I should be in Munich right now,’ and began to formulate my own Oktoberfest celebration up here.”

Giant soft pretzels with hot mustard lead the food parade. Then, slow-cooked kielbasa and sauerkraut, German potato salad and spaetzle dumplings. Later, rouladen (slices of flank steak stuffed with hot mustard, bacon, onion, and pickles), jagerschnitzel (thin, breaded pork chops simmered with mushroom-and-onion gravy). And finally, hoernchen, horn-shaped pastries filled with preserves, cinnamon sugar, fruit, etc.

How did he manage some of the more exotic ingredients at Summit? “The food inventory is quite varied; previous crews have requested different specialty items, so now we have things like Japanese Nori wrappers for sushi, cèpes for French mushroom dishes, and this year I brought up my FAVORITE barbecue sauce of all time, Rendezvous!  It comes from the best rib joint in America, The Rendezvous in downtown Memphis.  We’ve put it on basically everything, and I have another bottle to leave for the rest of the winter crews.  I also brought Thai iced tea leaves, Indian spice chai, and beignet mix from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans.”

Brad admits that most of his cooking experience, beyond barbeque, has been gained in Summit’s well-stocked kitchen.  He chose well-rated recipes off the Internet with ingredients compatible with Summit’s food stores. “The salt used on the pretzels wasn’t as large as the true German pretzel salt, but it was still coarse and chunky.”

We got to thinking about Summit and how the population up there on the world’s roof loves a shindig. Summiteers honor all kinds of occasions with food, games, parades, costume parties, and so on. In addition to the traditional holidays, Summit celebrates the equinoxes and solstices, of course—and also such things as completion of major science milestones or operational efforts. Since long-time Summit manager, Kathy Young, was in Denver last week attending our annual meeting, we cornered her and asked about the penchant for social gatherings.  “We celebrate because it’s something for us in an isolated community to do,” She explained. “It’s really nice for us to acknowledge the effort it takes to make Summit run and to do science here—plus, it’s a nice way to pass the time.”

And time is passing. The crew keeping Summit’s experiments running during this first phase of winter can now measure their time in isolation in days, as the incoming crew is due on the ice next week. Clearly, that’s another occasion for celebration.

And Speaking of NEEM

Has anyone else noticed how much the iconic NEEM dome. . .

. . . looks like the Omnidroid from The Incredibles?

Just sayin’.

The Weather Channel Features NEEM and ANG 109th

Watch Saturday/Sunday 7 -10am EDT

Robbie Score in front of the NEEM dome. Photo: Ed Stockard

Those of us in the U.S. wishing to visit the U Copenhagen-led NEEM drilling camp (or to fly with the Air National Guard 109th Airlift Wing) on the Greenland ice sheet should tune in to the Weather Channel this Saturday and Sunday (October 10 and 11) between 7am and 11am EDT. A crew from StormCenter (Dan Cohen, Steven Holloway, Rick Patterson and Heidi Cullen from Climate Central) visited Greenland last July and produced some stories about NEEM and the ANG that air this weekend.

Whet your appetite with video clips posted on the StormCenter Web site; they do a great job of putting you on the ice sheet, in the core rooms, in the cockpit with the Guard flight crew. They also make it clear that for everyone doing the work, it’s more than a job. NEEM field coordinator JP Steffensen (U Copenhagen) refers to his 29 years of research in Greenland as a “marriage for life” while ANG Lt. Col George Alston says the mission is “a great way to contribute to the nation.” And the woman with the biggest NEEM title of all, Chief Scientist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, she can’t suppress a grin when she admits she just “wants to work with the cores.”

The ANG provides the airlift muscle to the drilling camp, and the footage inside the cockpit looks great. “We shot some amazing footage,” agrees Dave Jones, head of StormCenter, “and we will continue to tell the stories that need to be told.” Jones has particularly kind words for the ANG, writing, “I can’t tell you how proud I am that the 109th exists! Thank you for all you do to advance our understanding of science and global climate change.”

The Glacier / Sea Dance

Glacier – Fjord Dynamics in Greenland

Score one for the seals. In addition to using high-tech equipment and sophisticated research techniques, researcher Gordon Hamilton (University of Maine, Orono) will also get a hand (fin?) from the ocean-dwelling creatures for his new NSF-funded collaborative study. Hamilton and a team of glaciologists and oceanographers will spend the next three years studying glacier-fjord interactions at Helheim Glacier in east Greenland to better understand how warm ocean waters are affecting the dynamics of outlet glaciers draining the ice sheet. The seals, tagged with small sensors that record position, depth and temperature, will collect data about what goes on beneath the ocean’s surface.

Gordon Hamilton (PI from University of Maine) recovers a GPS instrument from Helheim Glacier during summer 2009 field work. Photo: Leigh Stearns

Above water, the team will investigate the mutual relationship between the glacier and the ocean through field season surveys and year-round data collection in order to better understand how ocean currents and heat affect the ice sheet. The research team will use these and other data to map the circulation and properties of the fjord and adjacent offshore waters, and how these characteristics change with time.

The research comes as scientists modeling the impact of global warming and melting sea ice are challenged to estimate the rate of ice sheet mass loss caused by dynamic thinning. (For more information, see “Extensive dynamic thinning on the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets,” Pritchard et al.)

We talked to Professor Hamilton about his upcoming research.

Sermilik, Greenland, where Hamilton has also done research. Photo: Gordon Hamilton

PFS: Given your new NSF grant to explore ice sheet / ocean interactions and their influence on glacier motion, what did you think of the Pritchard article in Nature this week, suggesting “the most profound changes in the ice sheets currently result from glacier dynamics at ocean margins?”

Gordon Hamilton: It’s a nice paper because, for the first time, it takes a quantitative look at the entire coastlines of Greenland and Antarctica and shows that near-coastal changes are happening everywhere, not just in a few places. It really points to the importance of ice–ocean interactions in playing a major role in the health of the ice sheets.

PFS: The Pritchard article also mentions that “accelerated melt” is another relatively unknown area of glaciology. Can you explain what that is, and how your study may shed light on it?

Gordon Hamilton: In this case, they are referring to “submarine melting” which occurs wherever glacier ice comes into contact with the ocean (outlet glaciers and ice shelves, for example). Basically, any time you have ocean temperatures above the local freezing point (i.e., the freezing point adjusted for salinity and density), you have excess heat available to melt glacier ice. Because the ocean can carry so much more heat than the atmosphere, submarine melting can be much more effective than surface melting but it is very difficult to observe because of the obvious challenges in accessing the underwater portions of glaciers. Our work will help quantify the submarine melting component because we will be making direct measurements of ocean heat content, and the rate at which it is replenished, in the waters adjacent to a large outlet glacier.

PFS: The lack of knowledge about glacier/ocean interactions represents a large gap when it comes to modeling the impacts of melting ice sheets. How will your research improve modeling, and what specifically will you be looking for to develop a better understanding of these mechanisms?

Gordon Hamilton: Very true. There are just a couple of measurements of heat content and circulation in Greenlandic fjords, and most of these measurements have been isolated samples. We deployed some moored instruments as part of our pilot project, so we are just beginning to get a handle on how one-off measurements compare with a full year’s worth of data on fjord behavior. Seasonal and interannual variability is likely to be quite large, so we really need to quantify it so we can understand how much heat gets transported to these glacier fronts, when it gets transported, and if the rate of heat transport is changing with time. We will link these changes to observations of how the glacier behaves. For example, does the glacier calve more icebergs when the ocean is warmer, and does that cause the glacier to flow faster? These are basic things to know if we want to model how future ocean changes might affect the ice sheet.

PFS: Why did you choose Helheim Glacier?

Gordon Hamilton: Helheim is important because it drains about 5% of the entire ice sheet, it recently doubled its rate of mass loss, and because it discharges freshwater (in liquid and solid iceberg form) to a sensitive part of the North Atlantic Ocean where global ocean currents are formed.

PFS: Do the Pritchard et al findings potentially alter your research plan?

No, not really, but they do provide extra motivation in case anyone doubted the role of the ocean in potentially controlling the fate of the ice sheet.

PFS: On a lighter note, you have Greenlandic colleagues who will outfit seals with sensors to collect information on ocean temperature and depth. Can you tell us more about the logistics of this? What do you expect to learn from the seals? Any chance you can outfit them with cameras, as well, so we can get seal-cam pix of the fjord or ocean?

Gordon Hamilton: This is something new for us, but it’s a fairly standard technique for marine biologists who want to understand how and where seals dive for food. The tags will measure depth and water temperature. Seals are much more effective at making these kinds of measurements than scientists because they live there year-round and are continually diving for food, whereas we only visit the area for short field seasons. We use them as oceanographic platforms to build up a really long and detailed record of oceanic conditions. Each tag should last for a few months, so it will allow us to look at seasonal patterns in heat content of the offshore waters adjacent to the Greenland Ice Sheet. Plus it makes a great collaboration for glaciologists and oceanographers and marine biologists to be working together. I’m not sure about the practicalities of installing seal-cams, but we do plan to install cameras at a few key points overlooking the glacier and fjord. The cameras will have telemetry capability, so we should be able to monitor fjord conditions in near real-time.

OFS: As part of your outreach program, you’re planning to present a non-technical report to the Greenlandic community. How might the report benefit them?

Gordon Hamilton: In southeast Greenland, where we are working, the way of life for a huge percentage of the population is dependent on hunting and fishing in the coastal and fjord waters. These waters are starting to change character, so different species of fish (warmer-water species) are moving in and other types are disappearing. Local fisherman have to adapt to these conditions. Also, the warming waters are probably playing a role in the recent speed-up of the many of the ice sheet’s outlet glaciers, meaning there are more icebergs in the fjord year-round. Icebergs are a real hazard to safe travel for these hunters, so they will be very interested in our predictions for future conditions.

 

The front of Helheim Glacier. Photo:Gordon Hamilton

PFS: You’ve done extensive glaciology in Antarctica. How does working in Greenland compare to your antarctic research? Are you doing glacier/fjord studies on the southern continent as well?

Gordon Hamilton: This project just deals with Greenland, but some colleagues have recently started looking at similar processes in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. And we are thinking about starting related work beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, close to where several large outlet glaciers enter from East Antarctica.

Working in Greenland is quite different from Antarctica. For one, real populations of people live in villages around Greenland’s coast; Antarctica only has scientific research stations. So the local population provides an interesting cultural perspective. Plus it is just a few hours from the east coast of the US, meaning it is a lot easier and quicker to conduct fieldwork there than in Antarctica.

Touring and Tooling Around Thule

Thule Air Base, September 2009. Photos: Susan Zager

PFS’ Susan Zager visited Thule Air Base earlier this month to complete various end-of-season activities. She also gave a presentation on NSF research activities supported by CPS at Thule for the new US Ambassador to Denmark, Laurie S. Fulton. 

(Back in Copenhagen mid-month, Ambassador Fulton and Danish science minister Helge Sander signed a bilateral research cooperation agreement. In her remarks at the signing, the ambassador commented that she was “fascinated by the research being undertaken ‘On Top of the World’”, and said about international scientists working in Greenland, “their cooperative and collaborative efforts are remarkable.”  That’s just what we were thinking.)

Also touring Thule and present for Susan’s talk:  Commander Henrik Bunde Kudsk, Greenland Island Commander, the highest ranking Danish military officer in Greenland.  Commander Kudsk has a smorgasbord of responsibilities—military defense of Greenland, maritime monitoring, environmental oversight, search and rescue, fisheries monitoring, and scientific research oversight among them—and his office has been very helpful to us over the years.

 Meanwhile, the New York Air National Guard 109^th was also at Thule shuttling fuel to CFS Alert after delivering cargo and passengers to Thule for the GrIT sled tests. In addition to these planned activities, the Guard was called upon to evacuate a Danish member of parliament, who broke his arm shortly after arriving at the air base.  CPS worked with the National Science Foundation, Air National Guard, US state department, and the Danish government in Copenhagen to arrange the Danish PM’s transport to Kangerlussuaq, so he wouldn’t have to wait days for the next scheduled commercial flight out of Thule.

Prior to departing Thule, Susan visited field sites for scientists conducting research at Thule, including those for the NSF-funded International Tundra Experiment (ITEX, Steve Oberbauer, Florida International U, overall lead PI; Jeff Welker, U Alaska, Thule PI).  ITEX researchers study changes in the phenology, vegetation, and ecosystem properties that have occurred in tundra over the past 10-15 years in response to climate change and experimental warming.

This weather station near Thule monitors/collects a slew of climatic information used by ITEX researchers: temperature, air pressure, wind speed/direction, humidity, precipitation, etc.

A NIMBY Polar Bear?

Back in 2007, an International Polar Year (IPY) project  to establish a network of continuous GPS stations (dubbed “GNET”) in Greenland was launched as part of the U.S. contribution to the international Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET) consortium (Mike Bevis, Ohio State University, is the Lead PI). In addition to the GPS stations, the PIs of the project set out to collect seismic data. They plan to integrate it with GPS data and use the information to help scientists model Arctic ice loss over the past 10,000 years—since the last major ice age.

This map shows the GNET stations ringing Greenland. Read on to find out what happened to KAGZ, near the northwestern corner of the island. Image by GNET

It is an ambitious project that enjoys wide support—with the exception of the local fauna. It appears that a resident polar bear at a GNET site established in 2007 called KAGZ didn’t want it in his “back yard.” Specifically, the bear preferred to munch on the highly technical equipment instead of let it do its job and indirectly work toward protecting the bear’s melting habitat.

A mangled antenna reveals a polar bear visit. Photo: Finn Bo Madsen

There was evidence the bear tried to smash the power cables from the solar panels with his paw. Photo: Finn Bo Madsen

Marks on the antenna radome indicate the bear either scratched his back on or had been trying to hug the antenna. Photo: Finn Bo Madsen

And though it may not be apparent to the untrained eye, the bear also tinkered with the power cables from the auxiliary battery boxes. Said Danish colleague Finn Bo Madsen of Technical University of Denmark, who traveled to the site to install a gravity meter and subsequently was able to bring KAGZ back online: “My compliments to the cable design and make since they hold and were still working.”

Finally, we don’t really think the bear had a grudge against the site—or even the intellectual capacity to understand its function. Most likely, it had an itch and found a place to scratch it.

GrIT Snow Tests Delayed

The transition from land to ice is riven, as shown in this photo taken near Thule air space. It is also even more restless than previously thought. Photo: Susan Zager

Lack of snow and newly crevassed areas forced CPS on Monday to delay planned tests of equipment slated for a spring 2010 Greenland Inland Traverse (GrIT). The tests would have begun later this month, but after discovering a 15-foot deep crevasse in an area previously thought to be stable, and encountering a transition zone that had receded more than expected due to summer melt, the crew determined the planned test should be postponed, said Jay Burnside, PFS construction manager.

“The earthen terrain is made up of cobbles and, although it’s possible, it’s not feasible to cross without an adequate snow road,” he said.

The main ingredient for a successful traverse? Snow. Tracks from the October 2008 equipment recovery expedition. Photo: Ed Stockard

Originally a small crew, including snow and ice experts from CRREL,  planned to spend several weeks this fall studying snow temperatures and determining the best way to minimize friction between the sleds and the snow. At issue is an effort to improve the mobility of sleds pulled by over-ice tractors as CPS attempts to establish an overland traverse that could eventually provide reliable transportation from Thule Air Base to Summit Station. An inaugural traverse was completed in 2008.

The 2008 ice route from Thule Air Base to Summit Station, with a fuel-delivery stop at NEEM, the international, deep ice-core drilling camp. Image: Jay Burnside

The crew wanted to test conditions in September to capitalize on natural light and stronger snow conditions than those found in the spring, Burnside said. Although they could wait until later this season to conduct the tests, doing so would result in the team “running into shortened days and poor weather as we did last year during an equipment recovery in late October,” said Burnside.

Not your typical commuter vehicle. Photo: Ed Stockard

But the lack of snow, the unexpected crevasse and a nearby moulin (drain hole) raised enough feasibility and safety issues that the team decided to postpone the tests and analyze the area with ground penetrating radar to identify the safest route before setting out with heavy equipment. Though disappointed by the delay, Burnside said the recent discoveries yielded important information.

“We now know the first 70 miles of the route are dynamic and must be profiled each time we work on it, and we answered the question about whether the traverse would be better done in the fall,” he said. “Going too late [in the fall], we run into poor weather. Going too early, we do not have enough snow. Spring is the best time.”

In addition, the team learned that August is the best time to capture ground imagery when the majority of crevasses are open.

Burnside noted that all is not lost:  Prior to leaving, the team will complete planned maintenance on the heavy equipment, thus forestalling the need for another visit scheduled for December.  Still, the GrIT team is disappointed.

“The intent of our trip was to fast track our understanding of the snow/sled interface on traverse sleds,” said Burnside. “Last spring we discerned that the largest mobility issue we had was with the sleds and not the tractor. It was twice as difficult to pull those same sleds in Greenland as it was to pull them in the Antarctic. So we recommended a trip in the fall to test theories about the sleds in the real environment.” Two ice experts from CRREL who have already completed computer modeling analyses would have joined Burnside in Thule later this month to ground-truth the results with on-the-ground observations.  Now, the GrIT team will look forward to spring.

Educating the Whole Scientist

When Dartmouth College graduate student Simone Whitecloud landed in Greenland this July, 70-degree temperatures and mosquito-free skies greeted her. It was an auspicious start for the Ph.D. candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology who joined four Dartmouth professors and one other graduate student in Greenland for two weeks in a reconnaissance mission. Their task? Plan out the 2010 and beyond curriculum for the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award from the National Science Foundation: the Dartmouth IGERT in Polar Environmental Change.

“Greenland is incredibly beautiful,” said Whitecloud. “And it was surprisingly hospitable while we were there.”

Simone Whitecloud, a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology at Dartmouth College, traveled to Greenland this summer to help plan the upcoming Dartmouth IGERT summer curriculum. Photo Laura Levy.

During their field stay, the six-person team explored Greenland, seeking potential locations for short field studies for next summer’s group of graduate students.

“We were all giving feedback and brainstorming in the field,” said Whitecloud. “It was a combination of all of us looking at the landscape and thinking up potential study questions and projects that students could do in a few days as a group.”

The IGERT team discovered there's more to Greenland than ice--like flowers blooming near Kangerluusuaq, for instance. Photo by Simone Whitecloud.

Interdisciplinary in the most holistic sense: the cycle of life and death. The crew came upon a musk ox carcass near Kangerluussuaq. Photo Simone Whitecloud.

Beginning next summer, students in the Dartmouth IGERT in Polar Environmental Change will enhance their core curriculum for graduate programs in Earth Sciences, Engineering Sciences, or Biological Sciences with summer fieldwork in Greenland, where they will work at the University of Greenland and with the Inuit Circumpolar Council. The program will strike a balance between rigorous scientific field work and cultural immersion, encouraging students to explore the human aspects of the study subjects, said Whitecloud.

“The human side of the IGERT program interested me because I want to work with indigenous Greenlanders who have important  knowledge of their country and of the changing climate,” she said. “This program facilitates more of an open dialogue between the researchers and the native people.”

Whitecloud is a Native American of Anishinaabeg (Chippewa) descent from New Orleans. Despite her pursuit of “hard” science, she said the interdisciplinary approach of the IGERT program is a crucial component of her education.

“One of the struggles for me as an academic is to balance my heartfelt connection with nature with the objective view science requires,” she said.

The Greenland ice sheet begins. Photo Simone Whitecloud.

Dartmouth IGERT fellows will also interact with mentors who have expertise in the atmosphere, ice, snow, sea ice, soil, surface and ground water, vegetation and animal populations, and human dimensions of environmental change. Fellows apply separately to specific graduate programs and indicate their interest in the IGERT component.

During the summers of 2010-2012, fellows will spend approximately four weeks in Greenland, including  a two-week field-study  and a two-week exploration of policy issues—specifically the human dimensions of climate change—based in Nuuk, Greenland’s capitol. During the field work, students will be grouped into two disciplines: terrestrial studies based in Kangerlussuaq, and firn/ice studies based from Summit Station.

Dartmouth professors Ross Virginia, environmental science, and Xiahong Feng, earth sciences, collect soil samples. Virginia directs the IGERT Ph.D. program in Polar Environmental Change. Photo Simone Whitecloud.

The NSF-sponsored IGERT exists at many universities and aims to empower American Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the technical, professional, and personal skills to become leaders and creative agents for change. According to the National Science Foundation, “The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education, for students, faculty, and institutions, by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.”

09/09/’09

Through Ed Stockard’s Viewfinder

Our offering on this numerologically momentous day: the ninth post this season featuring a glimpse through Ed Stockard’s camera lens.

Ed visited Ilulissat a few days ago to clean and organize our storage locker.  In addition to the work, he enjoyed “a few nice sunsets over Disko Bay, a couple nice walks around town.”

You can enjoy them too:

Ilulissat looks over Disko Bay.

These pups will get to know that dogsled well as they grow. "In Ilulissat, which is also known as Jakobshavn, there are 4,500 people living today and at least 3,500 sled dogs, which underlines the importance of the dogsled as a means of transport even in a large modern town."--From http://www.Greenland.com

Nature's first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold. / Her early leaf's a flower; / But only so an hour. / Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing gold can stay. --Robert Frost