Entries by promice_geus_dk

The Greenland Ice Sheet has receded 27 years in a row

Scientists monitoring the Greenland Ice Sheet can copy-paste the conclusion of the result of this year’s melting season into the reports for the 27th year in a row. Often, it’s nice to be able to reuse your work and save some time, but no one is excited to be able to copy their old status […]

Unused archival data provide new context for contemporary climate change

Wegener’s century old pioneering field observations from the pre-satellite era of climate change research proves valuable for re-analysis purposes today. In a digital world, where we have become used to always verify field notes almost instantly remote sensing and climate data, it may seem there might be little use of digging into pre-satellite data. However, […]

New research project will track changing sponginess of the ice sheet

The uppermost parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet consist of a snow type that can act as a sponge for melt water under the right conditions. However, conditions are changing and GEUS researcher Anja Rutishauser would like to find out what that means to the ice sheet ability to retain melt water.  This week Anja […]

Vegetation drives heating and cooling in the Arctic

Global warming is changing the Arctic by causing permafrost thaw, glacier melt, droughts, fires and changes in vegetation. These developments are strongly linked to the energy exchange between land and the atmosphere strongly influenced by vegetation type which researchers has now helped uncover with data from PROMICE and GC-Net.   The Arctic’s diverse vegetation is […]

For the 26th year in a row, the Greenland Ice Sheet is shrinking

Every year in September, the annual melting season in Greenland is over, and glaciologists from GEUS take stock of the past 12 months’ ‘budget’ for the Greenland Ice Sheet and calculate whether the sheet has, overall, become bigger or smaller. This year, once again, it is unfortunately the latter.   In this melting year, much […]

Now we know how much ice will melt from Greenland at the very least

Based on two decades worth of measurements instead of models, glaciologists have for the first time determined the minimum ice loss committed from the Greenland Ice Sheet as from the climate warming so-far. This leaves out the uncertainty of any positive or negative future climate scenario, letting us know the absolute lower bound for what’s […]

A much needed check-in with Greenland’s 20,000 ‘baby glaciers’

Greenland’s many small glaciers are melting at great speed, and the melting is increasing, especially in the Arctic regions where the warming is worst. Now, researchers have studied precisely how much mass these glaciers – not connected to the ice sheet – have lost in recent decades.   In the Arctic, temperatures are rising more […]

Historic Greenland ice sheet rainfall unraveled

For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland ice sheet. This extraordinary event was followed by the surface snow and ice melting rapidly. Researchers now understand exactly what went on in those fateful summer days and what we can learn from […]

Field preparations: Training for worst-case glacier scenarios in Iceland

Glaciologists from GEUS practice glacier safety on a regular basis in order to maintain nessecary safety skilld needed for field work on the Greenland Ice Sheet. In March 2022 they went to Iceland to practice safety and crevasse rescue and here you can tag along.   “How the hell do you prepare for that?!” exclaims […]