News

Rare rain event occurs at Summit Station

By Von P. Walden (Washington State University), Alicia Bradley and Sam Dorsi (Polar Field Services)

During the summer of 2021, it rained at Summit Station on August 14^th (Figure 1). Liquid water occurs often in the atmosphere at Summit in a couple of different forms. Researchers often observe supercooled liquid water clouds over the station in summer. Most of the time, these water droplets are mixed with ice crystals to create “mixed-phase” clouds. Station personnel also observe rime on structures. Riming occurs when supercooled water droplets collide with a surface, then freeze, creating an icy glaze. This is something that the science technicians must contend with to keep outdoor instruments happy and healthy.

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to participate in a collaborative workshop targeted at identifying the Future of Greenland Ice Sheet Science. Although this workshop is organized at the behest of U.S.-based funding agencies, we invite the perspectives and participation of our international colleagues as well.

The Future of Greenland Ice Sheet Science (FOGSS) workshop descends from the successful legacies of the previous NASA PARCA and NSF GEOSummit workshop. The FOGSS workshop will consist of collaborative priority-setting discussions as well as brief presentations focused on increasing the impact of existing and proposed research activities in Greenland.

We have launched a website containing further information regarding the structure and orientation of this workshop, which is scheduled over Zoom for three hrs per day, April 6-8.

https://www.fogss-workshop.org/

This is just a quick reminder of the workshop on Greenland Fieldwork scheduled for next week, Sept 14 and Sept 16 from 12:30-16:30 US Eastern Time.

Due to a glitch in the registration form, if you are planning on attending, please send RSVP sco@geo-summit.org for meeting and connection details, and send along any mini-talks you have. Happy to answer any questions. All are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Previous announcement:

Dear Greenland Research Community,

Dear Greenland Research Community,

We invite you to a virtual meeting to discuss future goals for NASA and NSF funded field projects working on the Greenland Ice Sheet, Sept 14 and Sept 16, 2021, 12:30-16:30 eastern. Our goal is to discuss synergies for current and future field programs working on the ice sheet. This meeting is designed to be a combination of what in the past has been the GEOSummit workshop discussing future science goals at NSF's Summit Station, Greenland and a mini, field-centric version of NASA's PARCA meeting. We envision a return to PARCA's roots, devoted to discussing the science and results coming out of the various field campaigns supported by NASA and NSF and possible synergies between deploying projects. We are soliciting 5 min lightning talks (two slides max!) focused on fieldwork and field data that include 1) your most recent, exciting Greenland results you want to share and 2) future plans and logistics needs. We welcome any follow-on to recent traverse and field safety workshops and discussions.

On July 20, 2021, our website moved from geosummit.org to geo-summit.org. Please update your bookmarks. Also, the Summit Science Coordination Office (SCO) can now be reached via email at sco@geo-summit.org.

Is the surface snow melting more often at Summit Station? Insights from the NSF-funded ICECAPS project.

In the early 1990s, the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP-2) drilled a deep ice core at Summit Station that was over 3000 meters. This ice core revealed clues of past climate of both the Arctic region and the entire Earth. One analysis examined the ice core for particular layers that signified when the surface snow at Summit had melted. The result was that these “melt events” are rare. In fact, only about 50 melt events have occurred at Summit in the past 10,000 years. And over the past 3000 years, they have only occurred once in roughly every 250 years.

Record winds and bear visit present new environmental challenges

Summit Station wrapped up the 2018 summer after a season marked with weather and wildlife challenges. Feb 24, 2018 saw the highest recorded wind speed at Summit, as the NOAA weather station registered gusts of 104 knots (sustained wind speeds of 71 knots). The Summit winter-over four person crew, the science instruments, and the camp infrastructure weathered the storm with very few problems, save for a lot of digging.