An F-102 jet of the 332d Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Thule AFB in 1960. [Credit: United States Air Force.]

Today about 58,000 people live on Greenland spread over an area three times the size of Texas. On July 9, 1951 about 12,000 men arrived by ships to build the base. The 1953 film “Operation Blue Jay” documents the context, people, scenery, logistics, and construction that made today’s Thule Air Force Base (AFB).

The place should really be called by its native name Pituffik, but in 1953 about 130 Greenlanders living nearby were forcibly moved about 100 km to the north to what is now the town Qaanaaq, population 600. Lots of stories here, but I want to focus on the port of Thule:

Thule AFB with its airport, pier, and ice-covered ocean in the summer. The island is Saunders Island. The ship is most likely the CCGS Henry Larsen in 2007. [Credit: Unknown]

CCGS Henry Larsen in North Star Bay on Aug.-2, 2012 at the pier at Thule. Dundas Mountain is visible as is the Greenland Ice Sheet in the background to the south-east. [Credit: Andreas Muenchow]

Dr. Helen Johnson in August 2009 on the pier of Thule AFB with CCGS Henry Larsen and Dundas Mountain in the background. [Credit: Andreas Muenchow]

Pier at Thule in Aug.-2012 with the Air Force Base and the Greenland Ice Sheet in the background. [Credit: Andreas Muenchow]

The Port of Thule is the northernmost deep-water port in the world. It was meant as temporary structure in 1951 when it was built within less than 3 weeks around 4 barges each 76 meters long and 15 meters wide. These barges contained self-raising jacks to lift themselves up out of the water. Each barge was then supported with 12 concrete filled cylinders with steel-jackets to protect them from moving ice. In 2006 the so-called DeLong pier was repaired as some of the underwater support columns had developed cracks as the steel used in 1951 did not conform to modern engineering standards.

Thule Pier showing support cylinders during its 2006 repair [Credit: Appledorn Marine Engineering Inc., Portsmouth, NH]

I learnt all of this last week writing yet another proposal. A group of electrical and system engineers, computer scientists and oceanographers submitted a high-risk proposal to the National Science Foundation. Together we plan to build the prototype of an underwater communication network. I think of it as a cell-phone tower system under water. The goal is to get ocean data transmitted under water over long distances for a long time. This has never been done in the Arctic, but we would like to connect such a network to pier of Thule AFB so that our ocean data can be relayed back via satellites and internet connections. That’s the idea and that’s why Thule is on my mind …

Arctic sea ice near Thule, Greenland during transition from land-fast (Mar.-4, 2013) to mobile (May-22, 2013) ice along with tentative sensor array (red) and 2003 track of bottom survey (blue). Contours are 50, 100, 150, and 200-m bottom depth. Dark areas are open water, white areas are snow or ice, land topography is naturally illuminated by a low sun-angle on Mar.-4. [Data from MODIS Terra.]

Elwood, N.J. and J.W. Gaithwaite (2007). Perpetuating a Pier, Civil Engineering, 77 (5), 62-67.

Petermann Gletscher from MODIS Terra. Repeat NASA along-glacier flight tracks are shown in the left and middle panels. White line across the glacier are ICESat tracks. Thick black line across the glacier near y = 0 km is the grounding line location from Rignot and Steffen (2008). Dark areas within 2 km off the western wall are mountain shadows.

When I reported here that the same glacier discharged yet another ice island in July 2012, this one “only” twice the size of Manhattan, I was not so sure anymore, that this was merely another extreme event caused by natural processes. Furthermore, only 4 weeks later I was aboard the CCGS Henry Larsen working in Petermann Fjord and Nares Strait to recover instruments that we had deployed in 2009. Witnessing dramatic change off North Greenland from my first visit in 2003 to my last in 2012, I will send NASA a proposal on monday. If suported, it would enable me to test the idea, that a changing sea ice cover off North Greenland over the last 30 years or so relates to the retreat and decay of glaciers north of 76 N latitude. Most of these glaciers connect the Greenland Ice Sheet to the ocean via floating ice shelves as does Petermann.

This is an image that shows land-fast ice in Nares Strait next to Petermann with the large ice-arch blocking all flow of ice to the south where we see open water or thin ice:

June-10, 2012 MODIS-Terra image showing location of moored array that was deployed in Aug. 2009 and that we recovered in Aug. 2012.

Contrast the conditions in June 2012 above with in April of 2009 below. The southern ice-arch failed to form in 2009, there is much open water and loose, thin ice next to Petermann Fjord, but a northern ice-arch formed and prevented all flow of thick ice from the Arctic Ocean into Nares Strait or Petermann to glue it all together as it did in 2012 (or right now for that matter):

Largely ice-free Nares Strait on April 2009 with concurrent ocean velocity.

My main question is this: Has the changing sea ice cover next to glaciers anything to do with the break-up of many large glaciers all around North Greenland that we have observed the last few years? Is the removal of the summer sea ice from the many fjords of North Greenland a normal occurrence or is this a new regime that flushes many fjords free of ice in summer? Does the available record of air and ocean observations allow us to explain observed change? I believe that the public has all the data (MODIS, SSM/I, ICESat, etc) to answer these questions, but it will need a little work to actually provide quantifiable answers with error bars to pass academic peer review. Anyone is more than welcome to help and maybe even learn or apply skills for a graduate degree and well-paying jobs in physics or engineering.

ADDENDUM (16:33 EDT): As a result of Greenland losing so much mass and ice, the geographic North Pole started in 2005 to move abruptly towards Greenland. This was reported earlier this week by Nature after the research was accepted for publication at Geophys. Res. Let.

Johnson, H., Münchow, A., Falkner, K., & Melling, H. (2011). Ocean circulation and properties in Petermann Fjord, Greenland Journal of Geophysical Research, 116 (C1) DOI: 10.1029/2010JC006519

Münchow, A., Falkner, K., Melling, H., Rabe, B., & Johnson, H. (2011). Ocean Warming of Nares Strait Bottom Waters off Northwest Greenland, 2003–2009 Oceanography, 24 (3), 114-123 DOI: 10.5670/oceanog.2011.62

Reeh, N., H. H. Thomsen, A. K. Higgins, and A. Weidick (2001). Sea ice and the stability of north and northeast Greenland floating glaciers Annals of Glaciology, 33, 474-480

Rignot, E., & Steffen, K. (2008). Channelized bottom melting and stability of floating ice shelves Geophysical Research Letters, 35 (2) DOI: 10.1029/2007GL031765

Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Sky” painted in June 1889.

The whirls and curls evoke motion. The colors vibrate and oscillate like waves that come and go. There are rounded curves and borders in the tiny trees, the big mountains, and the blinking stars. Oceanographers call these rounded curves eddies when they close on themselves much as is done by a smooth wave that is breaking when it hits the beach in violent turmoil.

Waves come in many sizes at many periods. The wave on the beach has a period of 5 seconds maybe and measures 50 meters from crest to crest. Tides are waves, too, but their period is half a day with a distance of more than 1000 km from crest to crest. These are scales of time and space. There exist powerful mathematical statements to tell us that we can describe all motions as the sum of many waves at different scales. Our cell phone and computer communications depend on it, as do whales, dolphins, and submarines navigating under water, but I digress.

The Labrador Shelf Current off Canada moves ice, icebergs, and ice islands from the Arctic down the coast into the Atlantic Ocean. To the naked eye the ice is white while the ocean is blue. Our eyes in the sky on NASA satellites sense the amount of light and color that ice and ocean when hit by sun or moon light reflects back to space. An image from last friday gives a sense of the violence and motion when this icy south-eastward flowing current off Labrador is opposed by a short wind-burst in the opposite direction:

Ice in the Labrador Current as seen by MODIS-Terra on May 3, 2013. Blue colors represent open water while white and yellow colors represent ice of varying concentrations.

Flying from London to Chicago on April 6, 2008, Daniel Schwen photographed the icy surface of the Labrador Current a little farther south:

Ice fields seen in Labrador Current April 6, 2008 from a plane. [Photo Credit: Daniel Schwen]

Ice in the Labrador Current as seen by MODIS-Terra on April 6, 2008. Blue colors represent open water while white and yellow colors represent ice of varying concentrations.

The swirls and eddies trap small pieces of ice and arrange them into wavy bands, filaments, and trap them. The ice visualizes turbulent motions at the ocean surface. Also notice the wide range in scales as some circular vortices are quiet small and some rather large. If the fluid is turbulent in the mathematical sense, then the color contrast or the intensity of the colors and their change in space varies according to an equation valid for almost all motions at almost all scales. It is this scaling law of turbulent motions that three Mexican physicists tested with regard to Van Gogh’s paintings. They “pretended” that the painting represents the image of a flow that follows the physics of turbulent motions. And their work finds that Van Gogh indeed painted intuitively in ways that mimics nature’s turbulent motions when the physical laws were not yet known.

There are two take-home messages for me: First, fine art and physics often converge in unexpected ways. Second, I now want to know, if nature’s painting of the Labrador Shelf Current follows the same rules. There is a crucial wrinkle in motions impacted by the earth rotations: While the turbulence of Van Gogh or Kolmogorov cascades energy from large to smaller scales, that is, the larger eddies break up into several smaller eddies, for planetary-scale motions influenced by the Coriolis force due to earth’s rotation, the energy moves in the opposite direction, that is, the large eddies get larger as the feed on the smaller eddies. There is always more to discover, alas, but that’s the fun of physics, art, and oceanography.

Aragón, J., Naumis, G., Bai, M., Torres, M., & Maini, P. (2008). Turbulent Luminance in Impassioned van Gogh Paintings Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, 30 (3), 275-283 DOI: 10.1007/s10851-007-0055-0

Ball, P. (2006). Van Gogh painted perfect turbulence news@nature DOI: 10.1038/news060703-17

Wu, Y., Tang, C., & Hannah, C. (2012). The circulation of eastern Canadian seas Progress in Oceanography, 106, 28-48 DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2012.06.005

North-eastern portion of Petermann Glacier on Aug.-11, 2012, the meandering river is the centerline, view is almost due east with Kap Fulford and Kap Agnes on the left center and Daugaard Jensen Land in the background on the right. [Photo Credit: Canadian Coast Guard Ship Henry Larsen.]

Next, lets look ACROSS Petermann from roughly the same latitude. This perspective is more dramatic as vertical cliffs give shape, cliffs are cut by smaller side-glaciers. More specifically, we see the CCGS Henry Larsen helicopter flying down Belgrave Glacier as we look across Petermann which flows from the Greenland Ice Sheet on the left out to sea on the right. On the other (south-western) side we see Faith Glacier in the background about 10 miles away.

Seaward front of Petermann Glacier Aug.-11, 2012. View is from a small side-glacier (Belgrave Gl.) towards a similar glacier (Faith Gl.) across Petermann Fjord with Petermann Gletscher flowing from the left out to sea on the right. [Photo Credit: Erin Clarke, Canadian Coast Guard Ship Henry Larsen]

Contrasting large Petermann Gletscher, the many smaller glaciers on both its sides evoke drama as ice plunges down from 3000 feet above in a rage of forms, colors, and shapes. These side glaciers have their own side glaciers that sometimes rival the Alpine glaciers in Europe, Asia, and the Americas that most of us are more familiar with.

Some side glaciers have names, but they are rarely seen on maps and charts. The side glaciers are mapped, but photos are hard to find. Flying over them last year, I was utterly lost. Reviewing photos now, I remember people, smells, computer troubles, and exciting ocean discoveries. Nevertheless, I am hard pressed to place the places we saw on a map or name them. Distances are deceiving, the air is clean and 50-80 miles of visibility are common. A moment later, I cannot see the other side of the ship as we are suddenly in clouds and fog. Everything is always in motion, the ice, the water, the ship, the clouds, all of this without strong reference points like the exit or distance signs on a Turnpike, Interstate, or Autobahn.

Northern Kennedy Channel near the entrance to Petermann Fjord with Kap Morton in cloud banks. [Credit: Andreas Muenchow]

And along comes Espen Olsen, a frequent contributor to Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice blog and forums, and discovers a plethora of names that I can check, google, and use to remember expeditions to Petermann over the last 10 years with many good friends. So with his help and that of other explorers like Lauge Koch, Tony Higgins, and the collected wisdom of the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency, I labeled some prominent glaciers and capes on an Aug,-21, 2012 MODIS-Terra image that I constructed from data that NASA provide to anyone free of charge. I chose this image and time, because the 2012 ice island is already in Nares Strait and thus out of sight:

Names of glaciers, capes, islands in Petermann Region over MODIS of Aug.-21, 2012.

Espen tells me that his Danish sources are protected by copyright (I still like to cite them), but the aviation maps of the U.S. military are in the public domain and can be downloaded from the University of Texas in Austin Library, e.g.,

Petermann Gletscher and suroundings extracted from U.S. Defense Mapping Agency Chart ONC A5 (January 1991).

while the modified version of Figure-2 from Dr. Tony Higgins 1990 publication is available at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Nevertheless, it should only be used for non-profit educational purposes or as a reference:

Petermann Gletscher extend and topography from 1953 through 1978 (from Higgins, 1990) with 2012 terminus position drawn in by hand.

With all these details out-of-the-way, we can now start placing photos into places and add names to them. Perhaps others like Espen Olsen can write or edit Wiki entries or correct the false latitude and longitudes that populate the many databases that provide such information on the web. Over the next weeks and months I will try to post as many photos of Petermann’s natural beauty along with an evolving MODIS map that names and shows places. Here are just a few teasers without further comment except what’s in the captions.

The merging of Hubert (left) and Sigurd Berg (right) Glaciers which discharge into Petermann Gletscher on its eastern wall. The view is landward towards the north-east as the helicopter flies in from Petermann. [Credit: Barbara O'Connell, Canadian Coast Guard]

Petermann Gletscher and Fjord in Aug.-2012. View is to the north-west with Faith Glacier (top left) and Kap Lucie Marie (top right) showing the western wall of Petermann. [Photo Credit: CCGS Henry Larsen]

Looking down Belgrave Glacier discharging into Petermann Gletscher at its terminus in Aug. 2012 [Credit: CCGS Henry Larsen]

Higgins, A.K. (1990). Northern Greenland glacier velocities and calf ice production Polarforschung, 60, 1-23 Other: 0032-2490

I am not entirely sure on the exact location off south-east Greenland, perhaps this is the area near Helheim Glacier, e.g.,

Greenland’s bed-rock elevation from Bamber et al. (2003) digital elevation model based on remotely sensed surveys of the 1970ies and 1990ies gridded at 5 km resolution.

but this will become clear as soon as the data are released to the public. This usually happens within a few months. The wide and open data distribution and access is one of the greatest things about this mission. If you want to see where the plane is now, this is the screenshot I took just now (site)

Locations of NASA’s P3 air plane near Jacobshavn Isbrae on April-10, 2013.

The evolution of Jacobshavn Isbrae retreat from 1851 through present. [From NASA's Earth Observatory]

Jacobshavn lost its buttressing ice-shelf during the last decade and now rapidly discharges ice from the Greenland ice-sheet directly into the ocean at a rapid rate. Most likely, the ice-shelf was melted by the ocean from below (Holland et al., 2008). This type of accelerated discharge raises global sea-level, because ice previously sitting on Greenland’s bedrock moves into the ocean where it eventually will melt. In response to the ice removed, the bed-rock rises as there is less mass above it to hold it down (Khan et al, 2010). All this has actually been measured by satellites (mass-loss) and ground-based GPS (bed-rock response). We live in a dynamic and rapidly changing world where our sensors and software show new patterns of physics that have never been seen before. There is so much more to discover …

Csatho, B., Schenk, T., Van Der Veen, C., & Krabill, W. (2008). Intermittent thinning of Jakobshavn Isbræ, West Greenland, since the Little Ice Age Journal of Glaciology, 54 (184), 131-144 DOI: 10.3189/002214308784409035

Holland, D., Thomas, R., de Young, B., Ribergaard, M., & Lyberth, B. (2008). Acceleration of Jakobshavn Isbræ triggered by warm subsurface ocean waters Nature Geoscience, 1 (10), 659-664 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo316

Khan, S., Wahr, J., Bevis, M., Velicogna, I., & Kendrick, E. (2010). Spread of ice mass loss into northwest Greenland observed by GRACE and GPS Geophysical Research Letters, 37 (6) DOI: 10.1029/2010GL042460

Frederica de Laguna with Therkel Mathiassen in 1929 near Upernavik, Greenland. [From Bryn Mawr College's Collections]

Inuit women and children visiting the Hans Egede in Greenland in 1930. [From Cambridge University]

The evolution of Jacobshavn Isbrae retreat from 1851 through present. [From NASA's Earth Observatory]

The observant reader will notice how many Germans are in this set of story lines. Franz Boas was Jewish and thrived,in the Americas, Hans Krueger was a pompous idiot who disappeared, and Alfred Wegener was a tragic hero. All were German scientists, all converged with Frederica de Laguna in 1929 just when she emerged as a powerful mind of her own as a young graduate student in a field dominated by men. When Germany invaded Poland and France 10 years later, Dr. Frederica de Laguna was teaching her passions at Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia. When the war came to America, she asked for a leave of absence to serve in Naval Intelligence where she became a Lieutenant Commander. Her superiors at Bryn Mawr considered this a waste of her time, but she disagreed, and so do I. It is the many personal choices we make, both small and large, that form our personal histories, our science, our selves, and the larger history that we all live … [to be continued]

Davis, R. (2006). Frederica de Laguna of Bryn Mawr College Arctic Anthropology, 43 (2), 21-27 DOI: 10.1353/arc.2011.0075

VanStone, J., & de Laguna, F. (1980). Voyage to Greenland: A Personal Initiation into Anthropology Ethnohistory, 27 (2) DOI: 10.2307/481234

Frederica de Laguna in 1993 at age 87; she worked until age 98. [From New York Times, photo by Bill Roth, Anchorage Daily News]

Lonnie Thompson has perhaps traveled the world for ice cores and published its science implications more extensively than anyone else. At a recent meeting in San Francisco I heart him deliver an engaging and fun presentation. His writing is most accessible in terms of clarity and context.

Thompson, L. (2002). Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa Science, 298 (5593), 589-593 DOI: 10.1126/science.1073198

Edward H. “Iceberg” Smith of the US Coast Guard with reversing thermometer.

“Iceberg” Smith entered the Coast Guard Academy at age 21 in 1910 and served during World War I as a navigator on Atlantic convoy escort duty. After this war his ship was detailed to the International Ice Patrol and he became one of its first scientific observers at age 32 in 1921. As such he was sent for a year to Bergen, Norway in 1925 to learn the latest theories in physical oceanography. Scandinavian explorers like Nansen, Ekman, Sverdrup, Bjerknes, and Helland-Hansen defined physical oceanography at this time by applying physics on a rotating earth to phenomena that they observed from ships sailing at sea or ships frozen in Arctic ice. Much of this revolutionary work is now elementary oceanography taught in introductory courses, but then, nobody knew much about why ice and ocean move they way they do. It was time to put ideas to a thorough test which is what “Iceberg” Smith did, when he got his ship and orders to explore in 1928.

USCGC Marion built in 1927. Note the scale indicated by a person standing on the lower deck. [From http://laesser.org/125-wsc]

Armed with new ideas, knowledge, and the tiny USCGC Marion “Iceberg” Smith set to out to map seas between Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland to explain and predict the number of icebergs to enter the North-Atlantic Ocean. During his 10 weeks at sea he mapped ocean currents from over 2000 discrete measurements of temperature and salinity at many depths. This was before computers, GPS, and electronics. In 1928 this was slow to work with cold water collected in bottles with “reversing thermometers” that cut off the mercury to preserve temperatures measured in the ocean at depth to be read later aboard. Salinity was measured at sea by tedious chemical titrations. Imagine doing all of this from a rocking and rolling shallow draft cutter that bounces in icy seas for 10 weeks within fog much of the time. No radar to warn of icebergs either, and you want to study icebergs, so you move exactly where they are or where you think they are coming from. And they though that the Titanic was unsinkable.

Iceberg in the fog off Upernavik, Greenland in July of 2003. [Photo Credit: Andreas Muenchow]

USCGC Healy in northern Baffin Bay in July 2003 with iceberg. Ellesmere Island is in the background.

The 1928 Marion Expedition was the first US Coast Guard survey in Baffin Bay while the last such expedition took place 2003. Unlike “Iceberg” Smith we then had military grade GPS, radar, and sonar systems. These sensor systems allowed me to directly measure ocean currents from the moving ship every minute continuously from the surface to about 600 meters down. Oh, we also took water samples in bottles, but temperature, depth, and salinity are all measured electronically about 24 times every second. As a result we can actually test, if the physics that had to be assumed to be true in 1928 actually are true. As it turns out, the old theory to estimate currents from temperature and salinity sections works well off Canada, but not so well off Greenland. Furthermore, we found several eddies or vortices in the ocean from the current profiling sonars.

And finally, it took Edward H. “Iceberg” Smith only 3 years to publish most of his data and insightful interpretations while I am still working on both his and my own data 85 years and 10 years later, respectively. Sure, I got more data from a wider range of moored, ship-borne, and air-borne sensors, but I do wonder, if I really consider my data and interpretations as careful and think as thorough as LCDR Smith did. Furthermore, he had no computers and performed all calculations, crafted all graphs, and typed all reports tediously by hand. I would not want to trade, but all this makes me admire his skills, dedication, and accomplishments even more.

Dr Helen Johnson on acoustic Doppler current profiler (sonar to measure ocean velocity) watch aboard the USCGC Healy in Baffin Bay in 2003. [Photo credit: Andreas Muenchow]

P.S.: The New Yorker has three stories on the subject published in 1938, 1949, and 1959. I eagerly await to read those.

Smith, E. (1928). EXPEDITION OF U. S. COAST GUARD CUTTER MARION TO THE REGION OF DAVIS STRAIT IN 1928 Science, 68 (1768), 469-470 DOI: 10.1126/science.68.1768.469

Better technology, but less money: Eli Kintisch discusses the crossroads facing U.S. oceanography.(Podcast)

I will write more about this, but I have to run off to meet with an electrical engineer to discuss ideas on how we perhaps can get data from bottom-mounted sensors out of the ocean in ice-covered seas instantly, rather than waiting 2-3 years to get instruments back with a ship.

Kintisch, E. (2013). A Sea Change for U.S. Oceanography Science, 339 (6124), 1138-1143 DOI: 10.1126/science.339.6124.1138

Seal with ocean sensor.

Elephant seal off Antarctica with ocean sensor transmitting data via satellite [Credit Lars Boehme]

CCGS Henry Larsen in thick and multi-year ice of Nares Strait in August 2009. View is to the south with Greenland in the background. [Photo Credit: Dr. Helen Johnson]

This is from yesterday’s special issue of Nature which prompted this tongue-in-cheek comment by Prof. Dr. Cristina Archer:

Can we put a dollar amount to how much it would cost to fill the gender gap with respect to salary disparity?

Here is the procedure:

1) N_w = number of women scientists in the US
2) S_w = average salary of the N_w women scientists in the US
3) S_m = average salary of the male scientist in the US
4) Delta = difference in salary between male and female scientists
5) Tot = total dollars that the female scientists should be receiving to fill the disparity = Delta * N_w

To get a sense of the order of magnitude, here are some values:

1) N_w = 93,400 (in 2008, from the Nature paper)
2) S_w = $60,000 (this is actually the median, not the average, in 2008)
3) S_m= $84,000 (median in 2008)
4) Delta = $24,000
5) Tot = $24,000 * 93,400 = $2,241,600,000 (yes, billions)

For the nerdy of us, I acknowledge that using the median instead of the average might give an overestimate of the final bonus, although the order of magnitude is correct.

Since the gender gap seems very expensive to fill (~$2 billions), it might be cheaper and easier to actually reduce the salary of all male scientists (N_m = 179,400). The total saved would be:

Tot2 = $24,000 * 179,400 = $4.3B (of course billions)

If that money could be donated to NSF, the benefits to research in the US would be incalculable.

So … who wants to be the first male scientist to give up 28% of his salary and start filling the gender gap?

I admit, that I was the first to volunteer.

ADDENDUM: This post is not meant to criticize any institution in any way or form. The fact that these issues are discussed openly reflects both sensitivity and progress towards a common goal of gender equality in science. There is also a student’s perspective that Allison Einolf posted here last summer which includes references to a 2011 NSF study on the issue.