Tag Archives: moorings

How oceans interact with Greenland’s last floating glaciers

Posted on September 30, 2019 by | 1 comment

Testifying before the US Congress back in 2010, I refused to endorse the view that a first large calving at Petermann Gletscher in North Greenland was caused by global warming. When a second Manhattan-sized iceberg broke off in 2012, I was not so sure anymore and looked closely at all available data. There was not much, but what little I found suggested that ocean temperatures were steadily increasing. Could it be that warm waters 1000 feet below the surface could melt the glacier at all times of the year? Did this melting from below thin the glacier? Did these changes increase the speed at which it moves ice from land into the ocean? These were the questions that motivated a number of projects that began in earnest in 2015 aboard the Swedish icebreaker I/B Oden. Professional videos of this expeditions are at https://icyseas.org/2019/07/04/petermann-glacier-videos-science/

Scientists and technicians from the British Antarctic Survey drilled three holes through the floating section of Petermann Gletscher to access the ocean and ocean sediments below it. The ocean temperature and salinity profile confirmed both the warming trend observed in the fjord and ocean adjacent to the glacier, but more importantly, we placed ocean sensors below the glacier ice to measure temperature and salinity every hour for as long as the sensors, cables, and satellite data transmission would work. This has never been done around Greenland, so our data would be the first to report in real time on ocean properties below 100 to 300 m thick glacier ice at all times. What we saw when the data started to come in after 2 weeks, a month, and half a year stunned us, because (a) the ocean waters under the glacier changed by a very large amount every two weeks. Nobody has ever seen such regular and large changes in tempertures (and salinity) under a glacier bathed in total darkness at air temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit, but then our station went offline after 6 months and did not report any data to us via satellite.

Helicopter flight path on 27/28 August 2016 to reach Petermann Gletscher (PG) via southern (Fuel-S) and northern (Fuel-N) fuel stops in northern Inglefield and southern Washington Land, respectively. Background color is ocean bottom depth in meters.

Refurbished Petermann Glacier Ocean Weather station on 28. August 2016 with Greenland Air helicopter and British Antarctic radar station in the background.

The first work on the grant was to visit our station by helicopter in 2016 using two fuel caches that we placed the year prior from the Swedish icebreaker. At this point Petermann Gletscher and our projects attracted the attention of journalists of the Washington Post who had read some of the blog articles at this site. The two journalists accompanied us for a week and produced a beautiful visual report of our work that is posted at

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2016/12/30/with-enough-evidence-even-skepticism-will-thaw/

A detailed news report on our science and new findings appeared on page-1 of the Washington Post on January 1, 2017 [Broader Impacts]. I briefly summarize the results and findings of our subsequent data analyses of all data from August of 2015 through October of 2017 [Intellectual Merit]:

1a. Ocean temperatures increase at all five depths below the 100-m thick floating ice shelf of the glacier. These warmer waters are also saltier which demonstrates their Atlantic origin.

1b. Surface sensors indicate short, but intense pulses of meltwater passing our ocean array at spring-neap tidal cycles.

2a. Melt rate data reveal that these pulses occur during reduced tidal amplitudes and follow peaks in glacier melting that exceeded 30 feet per year.

2b. Statistical analyses indicate that the melt waters originate from a location near where the glacier sits on bed rock and that the melt water then moves seaward towards the ocean.

3a. Ocean melting below the glacier varies from summer (strong) to winter (weak) rising from a winter mean of 6 feet per year to a maximum of 240 feet per year during the summer.

3b. The large summer melting is caused by the increased discharge of subglacial runoff into the ocean near the grounding line.

3c. The larger discharge strengthens ocean currents under the floating glacier that drive ocean heat toward the glacier’s ice base.

The work formed one basis for the dissertation of PhD student Peter Washam who published the items #2 and #3 in the Journal of Physical Oceanography and Journal of Glaciology, respectively. He helped to drill holes and install sensors for the project that we first described at #1 in Oceanography. These three peer-reviewed journal articles are all published by not-for-profit professional organizations and societies dedicated to higher learning and public outreach. Furthermore we placed three separate data sets (1 | 2 | 3) at the Arctic Data Center that is funded by the National Science Foundation. More will come as we continue to work on the hard-won data from below Petermann Gletscher.

Look down the 0.3 meter wide drill hole. Yellow kevlar rope supports cable and ocean sensors.

Post Scriptum:
A modified version of the above was submitted the US National Science Foundation as part of the final reporting on grant 1604076 (“Glacier-Ocean interactions at a Greenland ice shelf at tidal to interannual time scales”) that funded this work with $360,400 at the University of Delaware from August 2016 through July 2019.

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Northern Winds and Currents off North-East Greenland

Posted on January 18, 2018 by | 1 comment

I spent 6 weeks aboard the German research icebreaker R/V Polarstern last year leaving Tromso in Norway in early September and returned to Bremerhaven, Germany in October. We successfully recovered ocean sensors that we had deployed more than 3 years before. It felt good to see old friends, mates, and sensors back on the wooden deck. Many stories, some mysterious, some sad, some funny and happy could be told, but today I am working on some of the data as I reminisce.

The location is North-East Greenland where Fram Strait connects the Arctic Ocean to the north with the Atlantic Ocean in the south. We worked mostly on the shallow continental shelf areas where water depths vary between 50 and 500 meters. The map shows these areas in light bluish tones where the line shows the 100 and 300 meter water depth. Fram Strait is much deeper, more than 2000 meters in places. I am interested how the warm Atlantic water from Fram Strait moves towards the cold glaciers that dot the coastline of Greenland in the west.

Map of study area with 2014-16 mooring array in box near 78 N across Belgica Trough. Red triangles place weather data from Station Nord (81.2 N), Henrik Kr\o yer Holme (80.5 N), and Danmarkhaven (76.9 N). Black box indicates area of mooring locations.

There is also ice, lots of sea icebergs, and ice islands that we had to navigate. None of it did any harm to our gear that we moored for 1-3 years on the ocean floor that can and often is scoured by 100 to 400 meter thick ice from glaciers, however, 2-3 meter thick sea ice prevented us to reach three mooring locations this year and our sensors are still, we hope, on the ocean floor collecting data.

Ahhh, data, here we come. Lets start with the weather at this very lonely place called Henrik Krøyer Holme. The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) maintains an automated weather station that, it seems, Dr. Ruth Mottram visited and blogged about in 2014 just before we deployed our moorings from Polarstern back in 2014:

Weather station on Henrik Kroeyer Holme [Credit: Dr. Ruth Mottram, DMI]

It was a little tricky to find the hourly data and it took me more than a day to process and graph it to suit my own purposes, but here it is

Winds (A) and air temperature (B) from an automated weather station at Henrik Kroeyer Holme from 1 June, 2014 through 31 August, 2016. Missing values are indicated as red symbols in (A).

The air temperatures on this island are much warmer than on land to the west, but it still drops to -30 C during a long winter, but the end of July it reaches +5 C. The winds in summer (JJA for June, July, and August) are weak and variable, but they are often ferociously strong in winter (DJF for December, January, February) when they reach almost 30 meters per second (60 knots). The strong winter winds are always from the north moving cold Arctic air to the south. The length of each stick along the time line relates the strength of the winds, that is, long stick indicates much wind. The orientation of each stick indicates the direction that the wind blows, that is, a stick vertical down is a wind from north to south. I use the same type of stick plot for ocean currents. How do these look for the same period?

Ocean current vectors at four selected depths near the eastern wall of Belgica Trough. Note the bottom-intensified flow from south to north. A Lanczos low-pass filter removes variability at time scales smaller than 5 days to emphasize mean and low-frequency variability.

Ocean currents and winds have nothing in common. While the winds are from north to south, the ocean currents are usually in the opposite direction. This becomes particular clear as we compare surface currents at 39 meters below the sea surface with bottom currents 175 or even 255 meters below the surface. They are much stronger and steadier at depth than at the surface. How can this be?

Image of study area on 15 June 2014 with locations (blue symbols) where we deployed moorings a few days before this satellite image was taken by MODIS Terra. The 100-m isobath is shown in red.

Well, recall that there is ice and for much of the year this sea ice is not moving, but is stuck to land and islands. This immobile winter ice protects the ocean below from a direct influence of the local winds. Yet, what is driving such strong flows under the ice? We need to know, because it is these strong currents at 200 to 300 meter depth that move the heat of warm and salty Atlantic waters towards coastal glaciers where they add to the melting of Greenland. This is what I am thinking about now as I am trying to write-up for my German friends and colleagues what we did together the last 3 years.

Oh yes, and we did reach the massive terminus of 79 North Glacier (Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden) that features the largest remaining floating ice shelf in Greenland:

We recovered ocean moorings from this location also, but this is yet another story that is probably best told by scientists at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute who spent much time and treasures to put ship, people, and science on one ship. I am grateful for their support and companionship at sea and hopefully all of next year in Bremerhaven, Germany.

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Posted in Greenland, Ice Cover, Oceanography, Polarstern, sea ice

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Two Years Ocean Observing Below Petermann Glacier Greenland

Posted on August 28, 2017 by | 10 comments

A year ago today I last set foot on Petermann’s floating ice shelf. The 28th of August 2016 was a drizzly, cloudy day with water running over the surface of the glacier in small streams emptying into larger streams to form small rivers that merged into larger channels carved into the ice. Two years ago Keith Nichols and I set-up a weather station atop the glacier. Many friends helped. We connected copper wires, ocean sensors, and a surface station to collect data from sensors 100-m below the ice in 800-m deep water. The small 2015 project of opportunity keeps giving us hourly ocean data. I am still stunned by our luck and technology.

My Petermann story started in 2010 when a first Manhattan-sized ice cube broke off the glacier. Two days after a University of Delaware press release, the US Congress asked me to appear before one of its inquiring committees. I humbly acknowledged how little I knew then, but everyone else knew even less. In 2012 another Manhattan-sized glacier piece broke off. While satellite a image shows what happens, only hard ocean data and modeling explains why it happens. Two research proposals were rejected, sadly, to probe ocean physics with carefully designed experiments, but in 2016 Alan Mix invited me to an expedition to Petermann aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden. I gladly accepted, but I wanted to contribute something. That “something” became the Petermann Glacier Ocean Weather Observatory.

Alan needed holes drilled through the 100-m to 400-m thick glacier. Actually, he needed mud from 800 meters below the glacier. Keith Nichols of the British Antarctic Survey drilled those holes for Alan and collected the mud. My plan was to recycle the hole, that is, we dropped kevlar line, copper wire, and ocean sensors into the ocean and connected all to a weather station. David Huntley and I designed the system that included an Iridium satellite phone. Iridium phone calls ceased in February 2016, but a “service call,” that is, a helicopter site visit fixed the station. Chris Mooney and Whitney Shefte told the story for the Washington Post on 30 December 2016.

Ocean temperature at 95-m, 300-m, and 450-m below the sea surface as well as pressure at the bottom sensor near 810-m depth (~810 dbar pressure) updated through 27 August 2017.

The graph shows the entire 2-year long data record. Each gray vertical bar indicates a month between July 2015 and December 2017. The top record shows ocean temperatures just below the floating glacier ice. It was a surprise to see the data change from -0.3 Celsius to -1.6 degrees Celsius. The latter is close to the freezing point of salt water. Hence I interpret low-temperature events as meltwater pulse that swoosh past our sensor.

At 300-m we find a smaller range of temperatures near +0.1 degrees Celsius. Note the steady increase of temperature. Fluctuations are similar, but their absolute values increase with time. The linear warming trend becomes clear at 450-m depth, because the fluctuations diminish, but the warming does not. Temperatures at all depths increased over the entire two years of hourly observations.

The pressure record of the bottom-most sensor on the kevlar line perplexes me: During the first year the sensor slides into deeper water, because the kevlar stretches as all lines do when weighted down. In July 2016 the sensor sharply rises by almost 3 meters from 810.5 to 808.5 dbar to just as rapidly drop again to the 810.5 dbar value. The same feature occurs in the summer of 2017 also. It relates to the summer melt season, but how? I do not know.

The 2-year record is not perfect as the many gaps indicate. These result from electronic and mechanical failures that, I feel, are caused by long and harsh winters when temperatures dropped below -40 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. These cold temperatures challenge the best batteries during the 4-5 months of total darkness. On 20. December 2016 our batteries ran out and shut down the station. The sun revived our data gathering when the solar panels recharged batteries in March 2017.

The glacier also melts about 1-2 meters at the surface each summer. This surface melt tilted and almost crashed the station that we repaired last year today. In 2015 we had 2-m of pipe to fix into the glacier ice. In 2016 we replaced this with a 4-m pole that should survive two year’s of surface melt, I hope.

There are many, many people who all contributed in ways both small and large. It takes a village to raise a station on Greenland:

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Greenland Oceanography by Sled and Snowmobile

Posted on March 29, 2017 by | 3 comments

Wind chill matters in Greenland because one must see and breath. This implies exposed skin that will hurt and sting at first. Ignoring this sting for a few minutes, I notice that the pain goes away, because the flesh has frozen which kills nerves and skin tissue. The problem becomes worse as one drives by snowmobile to work on the sea ice which I do these days almost every day.

Navigating on the sea ice by identifying ice bergs with LandSat imagery. The imagery also shows polynyas and thin ice in the area. [Photo Credit: Sonny Jacobsen]

Mar.-22, 2017 LandSat image of study area with Thule Air Base near bottom right, Saunders Island in the center. Large red dots are stations A, B, and C with Camp-B containing weather station, shelter, and first ocean mooring. My PhD student Pat Ryan prepared this at the University of Delaware.

My companion on the ice is Sonny Jacobsen who knows and reads the land, ice, and everything living on and below it. He teaches me how to drive the snowmobile, how to watch for tracks in the snow, how to pack a sled, and demonstrates ingenuity to apply tools and materials on-hand to fix a problem good enough to get home and devise a new and better way to get a challenging task done. Here he is designing and rigging what is to become our “Research Sled” R/S Peter Freuchen, but I am a little ahead of my story:

Sonny Jacobsen on Mar.-27, 2017 on Thule Air Base building a self-contained sled for ocean profiling.

First we set up a shelter in the center of what will hopefully soon become an array of ocean sensors and acoustic modems to move data wirelessly through the water from point A in the north-west via point B to point C. Point C will become the pier at Thule Air Base while the tent is at B that I call Camp-B:

Ice Fishing shelter to the north-east of Saunders Island seen to the left in the background.

Next, we set up an automated weather station (AWS) next to this site, because winds and temperatures on land next to hills, glaciers, and ice sheets are not always the same 10 or 20 km offshore in the fjord. It is a risk-mitigating safety factor to know the weather in the study area BEFORE driving there for 30-60 minutes to spend the day out on the ice. It does not hurt, that this AWS is also collecting most useful scientific data, but again, I am slightly ahead of my story:

Weather station with shelter at Camp-B with the northern shores of Wolstenholme Fjord in the background. Iridium antenna appears just above the iceberg on the sidebar of the station. Winds are measured at 3.2 m above the ground.

With shelter and weather station established and working well, we decided to drill a 10” hole through 0.6 m thin ice to deploy a string of ocean instruments from just below the ice bottom to the sea floor 110 m below. Preparing for this all friday (Mar.-24), we deploy 22 sensors on a kevlar line of which 20 record internally and must be recovered while 2 connect via cables to the weather station to report ocean temperature and salinity along with winds and air temperatures. It feels a little like building with pieces of Lego as I did as a kid. Engineers and scientists, perhaps, are trained early in this sort of thing.

Weather station with ocean mooring (bottom right) attached with eastern Saunders Island in the background on Sunday Mar.-26, 2017.

Sadly, only the ocean sensor at the surface works while the one at the bottom does not talk to me. I can only suspect that I bend a pin on the connector trying to connect very stiff rubber sealing copper pins from the cable with terminations equally stiff in the cold, however, there are other ways to get at the bottom properties albeit with a lot more effort … which brings me to R/S Peter Freuchen shown here during its maiden voyage yesterday:

R/S Peter Freuchen in front of 10” hole (bottom right) for deployment of a profiling ocean sensor. The long pipes looking like an A-frame on a ship become a tripod centered over the hole with the electrical winch to drive rope and with sensors (not shown) over a block into the ocean. This was yesterday Mar.-28, 2017 on the way from Camp-B back to Thule Air Base.

The trial of this research sled was successful, however, as all good trials, it revealed several weaknesses and unanticipated problems that all have solutions that we will make today and tomorrow. The design has to be simple to be workable in -25 C with some wind and we will strip away layers of complexities that are “nice to have” but not essential such as a line counter and the speed at which the line goes into the water. There can not be too many cables or lines or attachments, because any exposure to the elements becomes hard labor. This becomes challenging with any gear leaving the ocean (rope, sensors) and splattering water on other components. Recall that ocean water is VERY hot at -1.7 C relative to -25 C air temperatures. This means that ANYTHING from the ocean will freezes instantly when in contact with air. Efficiency and economy matter … as does body heat to keep critical sensors and batteries warm.

A big Thank-You to Operation IceBridge’s John Woods for something related to this post that I wish not to advertise 😉

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Travels to Greenland in Winter

Posted on March 16, 2017 by | 6 comments

Waking up after 5 hours on a plane from Baltimore, Maryland to Thule, Greenland large white Pitugfik Gletscher distinguishes itself from the white sea ice by its ragged snout as the plane approaches my new home for the next 6 weeks. I am traveling with 9 midshipmen of the US Naval Academy of which two are women, their 4 professors, and bear guard from Alaska. We will be working and living together for the next 7 days.

Pitugfik Glacier during the early morning hours of Mar.-9, 2017.

A little further along the coast we enter Wolstenholme Fjord where from the plane wide cracks of open water stand out as black against the bluish white horizon. This will be the outer margin of where I plan to work the ice and ocean underneath the next 6 weeks. We need to stay on the shore side of this transition of land-fast to mobile sea ice. I have watched this boundary for the last 4 months with satellite imagery, but seeing with my own eyes is an entire different and humbling experience.

Sea ice near Kap Atholl with heads of open water that separate land-fast ice that does not move from mobile ice.

We land safely at the airport, get our passport stamped by Danish officials, pick up our luggage, and are received by wonderful people working for both NASA and the National Science Foundation. After a hearty lunch of dark rye bread and my beloved pickled herrings christmas arrives in the form of many carefully wrapped packages: I try to find my Arctic clothing that I shipped months before. It is much-needed as the -33 C take your breadth away. I also find the 2,500 lbs of science gear, some of which had arrived directly from Canada after it was ordered Dec.-10, 2016: Without this $22,000 electrical winch, I would be hard pressed to send sensors to the bottom of the ocean and back. Everything appears to be in place and fine, but some acoustic gear is still missing as its large lithium batteries need diplomatic clearances which takes a little longer. Perhaps they will be on the plane that is about to land. There is only 1 flight per week that connects Thule to the US. Hence advance planing is needed and those lithium batteries are not needed until April 6 when Lee and Taylor arrive from Massachusetts.

Where in this pile are my snow boots? Palletized gear on arrival in Thule Greenland.

The next day we put some of our gear out to measure how thick the sea ice is near the coast. While drilling a hole requires power tools, the ice is actually cut by a razor-sharp drill bit that is sensitive to damage when it refuses to cut the ice and no amount of force available can force it through the 3-4 feet of ice we find. We all learn the hard way when we accidentally drill into the frozen sea bed without finding any water. One drill bit down, we only got 2 more and are much, much more careful with it. The remaining drill bits have to last for the next 6 weeks … actually, they do not, because I can change the blades should one bit become dull. [I did not tell this the Naval Academy guys who were doing much of this drilling to support NASA’s Operation IceBridge.]

And on this note, I am heading out to sea at 7:59 am to drill one more hole to prepare for a first mooring deployment. A wooden stick without sensors attached will simulate a mooring that I want to recover after it is frozen in. More later …

P.S.: More photos and stories on this week’s adventures can be found at

https://www.facebook.com/USNAPolarScienceProgram/

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Posted in Greenland, Ice Cover, sea ice, Thule

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