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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The first team of researchers from GEUS has left for Greenland in the field season of 2022. As of every year, this is the culmination on months of preparing with field logistics and mandatory safety courses. The field season of GEUS research in Greenland has officially started as of the middle of April. […]
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 […]
This year, the annual documentary festival CPH DOX opened with the film Into the Ice, a documentary following three glaciologists in their work on the Greenland ice sheet. One of the scientists is PROMICE professor Jason Box from the Department of Glaciology and Climate at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen. […]
The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting from the bottom up, caused in part by energy convection from melt water within the ice. An idea partly coined by researchers at GEUS and now supported by first field observations. The effect of meltwater descending from the surface of the ice sheet down to the bed – […]
