Instrument installations and testing at Summit Station, Greenland
Instrument installations and testing at Summit Station, Greenland
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AURORA is currently in Iceland
We’ve been involved in monitoring clouds and the atmosphere at Summit Station, at the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet, since the start of the ICECAPS project in 2010. Unfortunately, funding for ICECAPS ended in 2025 and the observatory was mostly dismantled. Supported by GAMB2LE, Heather and Sarah travelled to Summit this August to install a new surface energy balance station to continue the critical long term record of the energy balance at the highest, coldest part of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We were also able to use this opportunity to test our brand new Holographic Ice Particle Imager – the first time that this instrument, co-designed with Amodo Design to capture high resolution images of ice particles in clouds, has been used outside of a lab environment.
Live data from our instruments in Greenland can be viewed here: https://iceflux.gamb2le.co.uk/
Summit Station is over 200 km from the edge of the ice sheet in any direction. To get there, we travelled on a US Air National Guard C130 ski plane. The ANG use their flights to Summit to practise ski-plane landings for supporting science in Antarctica.
Sarah collecting the first snow crystal images with the new Holographic Image on the roof of the Atmospheric Watch Observatory at Summit – eventually this instrument will be mounted on a drone so that we can image ice particles inside clouds to understand the physical processes controlling cloud compsition and lifetime.
Sarah raising our thermistor string – the logger box was over 2 m below the surface after it was initally installed in 2023. The data from thermistor string helps us to understand how energy from the atmosphere translates down into the ice.
GX010095 (1).movHeather and Sarah installing instruments on our new surface energy balance station. The instruments on this structure measure how much radiative energy, from the sun and the temperature of the atmosphere, is reaching the ice sheet surface, and how much is being emitted from the ice back to the atmosphere.
We got back to Kangerlussuaq, a small town on the west coast of Greenland, just in time for the annual “Running of the Moskus” race. This 21 km or 5 km race towards the ocean from the ice sheet is hosted annual by Polar Field Services to raise money for the school in Kangerlussauq. The raised over £10,000 this year – congratulations all!
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